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AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 
ITS CAUSE AND CURE 



AMERICAN 
NEUTRALITY 

ITS CAUSE AND CURE 



BY 

JAMES MARK BALDWIN 

Ph.D., HON. D.Sc, HdW. LL.D 

FORMERLY PROFESSOR IN TORONTO, PRINCETON, AND JOHNS 
HOPKINS UNIVERSITIES, AND THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF 
MEXICO ; HERBERT SPENCER LECTURER (1915-16) AT OXFORD 
UNIVERSITY, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTB 
OF FRANCS 



NEW YORK y LONDON 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

1916 



,3 6/^ 



First published, March 191 6 






PREFACE TO THE FRENCH 
EDITION 

The conditions under which these lectures 
have been prepared are so special that a word 
explaining them may not be considered out 
of place. 

The subject was one assigned to me * as 
being of interest just at present to audiences 
of university people in the provincial cities 
of France. I felt that an opportunity was 
offered to point out to the French not only 
the real feeling of the American people toward 
them and their cause, but also to explain to 
them the internal conditions which hinder 

• Assigned, that is, by the Paris Committee of 
the Harvard Foundation, for which the lectures 
were written. In view of the circumstances created 
by the war, it has been decided to publish and circu- 
late the lectures in this form, instead of delivering 
them in the Provincial Universities. 

s 



PREFACE 

the free expression of the American national 
conscience and will in this great crisis. This 
has been my object. 

I speak as a loyal American citizen telling 
the truth as he sees it. If this seems to reflect 
upon the present American Government, it 
should be remembered that it is only upon 
the existing government — ^whlch every good 
citizen has not only the right but the duty 
to hold to account — not upon the Nation nor 
upon the Institutions which the office-holders 
of the moment happen to administer. This 
has been one of the great lessons of the war : 
the reality of the distinction between a people 
and its government. Greece and Bulgaria 
come at once to mind. The French Repub- 
lican Constitution has been criticized, in view 
of the place without authority it assigns to 
the President. Events show that the Ameri- 
can Constitution is open to the opposite 
criticism, that it reposes in the President an 
authority in some respects too great. Such 
an authority may on occasion fail to make 
itself felt in the direction in which the true 
sentiment of the nation would express 
itself. 
6 



PREFACE 

May one say fully — it may be asked — 
what one thinks, when abroad ? 

The distinction between what one may say 
at home and what it is proper to say abroad 
possesses, in this day of the cable and the 
interviewer, no longer any relevancy. Mr. 
Roosevelt and President Eliot speak to 
London, Paris, and Berlin as well as to New 
York and Cambridge ; there is no reason in 
this that they should not speak. The same 
is true mutatis mutandis of those who speak 
in Paris or London. 

The subject of these lectures is of such 
actuality that it is impossible as yet to make 
statements fully documented with statistics 
and citation of texts. For this reason, no 
less than that of lack of time, I have avoided 
topics open to dispute and omitted statements 
requiring exact statistics. Apart from the 
theoretical interpretations, which are my own, 
the historical and other positive statements 
made are, I believe, only those to which 
competent students of American affairs would 
generally subscribe. 

J. M. B. 

Paris, February, 1916. 

7 



ADDITIONAL NOTE TO THE 
ENGLISH EDITION 

These lectures have been left substantially 
as they were prepared for a French audience 
and published in French {La Neutralite Ameri- 
caine, Paris, Alcan, February 191 6). Certain 
short passages have, however, been added as 
foot-notes. 

This will explain sufficiently to British and 
American readers the allusions made to France 
and the French, who are taken to stand, with 
England and the British for the Allied Nations. 
Much might have been appropriately said, 
had I been addressing a British audience, on 
the subject of Anglo-Saxon opinion as it 
exists — both pto and con — in the United 
States ; also on that of the feeling of the 
Americans as to the place of Russia 'n the 
war. Both of these subjects are of such 
importance that the mere allusions possible 

9 



ADDITIONAL NOTE 

here would have been too inadequate. Besides 
this, I hope to toach upon both these topics 
in another publication. 

I trust, however, that the opinions actually 
expressed in these lectures will be sufficiently 
clear. I am an Anglo-Saxon American first 
and foremost — an American who believes in 
his England and who also loves his France. 

J. M. B. 



10 



CONTENTS 

LECTURE I 

THE CHARACTER OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 
CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF THE 
PRESENT CRISIS 

SBCT. PAGB 

I. The Internal Political Situation 17 

II. The American Citizen as he is 24 

III. Absorbing Internal Problems 28 

IV. External Policy of National 

Isolation : Washington and 
Monroe 32 

V. Pacifism and Non - resistance 

Theories 40 

VI. Party Politics and Legislation 47 

VII. What is Needed in this Crisis 49 



II 



CONTENTS 



LECTURE II 

THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON 
AMERICAN OPINION 

•XCr. PAOB 

I. Negative Effects : The Low State 

OF National Sentiment Revealed 55 

II. Foreign Cultural Influences : Ger- 
man Educational Invasion 57 

III. French Influence in Art and Lite- 

rature 63 

IV. The American's Understanding of 

Neutrality 68 

V. Positive Effects : The Reaction of 
Popular Sentiment against Ger- 
manism AND the Demand for Mili- 
tary Preparation 74 

VI. New Admiration for France and 

England 79 

VII. New Conception of Democracy : 

Illustrative Cases 81 

VIII. The Panama Canal Tolls Question 82 

IX. The Ship Purchase Bill 85 

X. The Exportation of Munitions of War 87 
12 



CONTENTS 



LECTURE III 

THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON 
AMERICAN LIFE 

SSCT. VAOB 

I. Effects on the Population : Immi- 
gration AND THE Settlement of 
Foreign Groups 97 

II. Industrial Effects : Changes in 
Industry and the Conditions of 
Labour 113 

III. Effects on Foreign Trade and 

Transportation 117 

IV. Effects on Finance 124 

V. The Balance Restored : American 

Liberality 126 

VI. Moral Effects : A Changed Pacifism 128 



13 



LECTURE I 

THE CHARACTER OF AMERICAN 
DEMOCRACY CONSIDERED IN THE 
LIGHT OF THE PRESENT CRISIS 



LECTURE I 

I 

THE INTERNAL POLITICAL 
SITUATION 

The Internal Politics of the American 
Commonwealth present certain peculiar fea- 
tures, which are due to the historical condi- 
tions of the origin of the Union and to the 
peculiar provisions introduced into the federal 
Constitution. The historical conditions need 
not detain us, since it is with the actual theory 
of democracy, as embodied in the Constitution 
and infused into the life of the country, with 
which we are concerned. 

Undoubtedly the characteristic feature of 
American democracy, as embodied in the 
Constitution, is its federal character. The 
nation is not simply a State, it is a group of 

B 17 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

United States. The principles of the Declara- 
tion of Independence had to be embodied in 
the form of a federation of existing colonial 
establishments, each having its old-country 
traditions and each jealous of its relative 
position in the new Union. The Constitution 
was the result. 

This fact, that the United States was to 
be a " sovereign union of sovereign States," 
gave the United States its motto, E pluribus 
unum. The one State which resulted per- 
petuated the many ; it did not destroy them : 
and both the interpretation by the courts 
and the practical administration of the duality 
have given rise to the most subtle judicial 
controversies, to the most violent sectional 
and party divisions, and to one of the most 
destructive and dramatic civil wars of modern 
times. 

The theory of " FederaHsm " held to the 
fundamental unity of the nation its national 
sovereignty, to which, on occasion, the rights 
of the several States might and must be 
subordinated : there can be no division or 
delegation of a nation's sovereignty ; it is 
one and supreme 
i8 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

The theory of " States Rights," on the 
other hand, held that the individual States, 
on entering into the Union, did not lose or 
convey their sovereignty ; each voluntarily 
submitted to the limitations stated in the 
national Constitution ; but each might re- 
assert its separate nationality and withdraw 
from the Union. The war of 1861 was one 
of " Secession." 

It required only a question of enough 
importance to show that a true sense of 
federal nationality was not born in the Ameri- 
can people with the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion. The powers reserved to the States as 
such were so broad and fundamental that 
they each still retained the degree of national 
consciousness developed in its colonial history. 
This became evident before the crisis of i860. 
The question of negro-slavery was a sectional 
one — the slaves being held in certain States 
only, which formed the so-called " black belt," 
extending from Maryland southward to 
Florida and westward to Kentucky and 
Louisiana. The States of the " black belt " 
asserted the right to harbour the institution 
of slavery, and denied the right of the other 

19 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

States, or of the national government, to 
interfere with it. 

It was on this political issue, not on the 
moral one of the justification of slavery itself, 
that the Civil War was fought. The emanci- 
pation of the slaves was, it is true, the result 
of a great moral upheaval ; but the measure 
was imposed upon the southern States ab 
extra, and its imposition involved what, in 
their view, was a violation of the rights of 
the slave-States. 

The sense of nationality inspired by the 
Union came into direct conflict, therefore, 
with that inspired by the individual State. 

This duality of sentiment and allegiance, 
in the American, has not been yet removed, 
despite the great reinforcement of national 
sentiment produced by the Civil War. Every 
citizen of the United States may be called 
upon to decide whether in some question of 
importance he will follow the leading of his 
State or renounce this in view of his higher 
allegiance to the nation. 

That this is not merely an academic dis- 
tinction I may make clear by citing certain 
recent cases of conflict or threatened conflict 

20 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

between State and Federal authorities. The 
State of CaUfornia proposed to exclude Japa- 
nese scholars from the public schools of the 
State. This was protested against by the 
Japanese Government, on the ground that the 
treaties with Japan guaranteed to the Japa- 
nese the same rights as those enjoyed by other 
nations in the entire territory of the United 
States. While this contention is true, still 
the Constitution of the United States reserves 
the control of primary education to the State 
authorities. Here is a real conflict, and a 
most grave problem, temporarily adjusted by 
compromise, but threatening to tax the 
country's wisdom and patriotism in the near 
future.* 

Other recent questions of practical urgency 
concern the military and police powers of 
State and Nation respectively. Practical 
situations have required the use of the State 

• Great interest attaches to a decision of the 
Supreme Court rendered on November 2, 191 5> de- 
claring unconstitutional a law denying certain privi- 
leges to foreigners in the State of Arizona. The 
principles would seem to be the same as those 
involved in the California school case. 

31 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

Militia for national purposes, with or without 
the consent of the State authorities : situa- 
tions demanding the suppression of riots in 
other States. We have also seen the use of 
national troops for police purposes in a State 
which did not give its consent to this use. 
Recently there have been grave complications 
of the kind — that of the demand for the 
use of national troops, for example, to 
suppress the disorders in the coal-fields of 
Colorado. 

That this state of things may involve inter- 
national complications is illustrated in the 
case of the refusal of the United States to give 
an indemnity for the deaths of certain Italian 
citizens killed in local riots, on the ground 
that the affair fell not under national but 
under State jurisdiction. 

Moreover, the several State constitutions, 
now forty-eight in number, differ very widely 
on matters of social and political importance. 
According to the National Constitution they 
may differ in respect to all those affairs which 
that Constitution itself does not reserve for 
federal control. Marriage and divorce laws, 
suffrage in local elections, judicial procedure 

22 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

in the State courts, labour laws within the 
State (such as child-labour regulations), the 
control of vice, laws respecting the manufac- 
ture and sale of alcoholic beverages — a thou- 
sand things of the first social importance 
are differently regulated according to the 
tradition and preference of a section, of a 
greater or lesser community, within the larger 
whole of the Nation. The constitution of 
each State has been passed upon by the 
Congress, but its supporters have seen to it 
that the national inspection of it at Washing- 
ton was not a revision of it. The case of an 
actual revision is presented when the national 
Constitution is actually violated by some pro- 
vision in the proposed State constitution — as 
in the case of Mormonism in the State of Utah. 
I find in this fundamental character of 
American politics something which differen- 
tiates the United States from other countries 
and notably from the great European re- 
public, France. It produces in the average 
American citizen two attitudes or habits of 
mind, both of which are strikingly in evidence 
at the present crisis. 



23 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

II 

THE AMERICAN CITIZEN AS HE IS 

First, there is the American citizen's exclu- 
sive interest and preoccupation with internal, 
domestic affairs, with his consequent apparent 
indifference or ignorance as respects essential 
foreign questions. And, secondly, there is his 
extreme docility and leadableness, his sugges- 
tibility and ready obedience, in matters of 
positive governmental restraint and control. 
He is the most submissive and docile demo- 
cratic citizen in the world. 

The second of these characteristics I shall 
not dwell long upon ; I have enlarged upon 
it in another lecture also given to a French 
audience.* It results from the fact that the 
citizen is controlled from two sides, in two 
ways, possibly in the same matter. That 

* " French and American Ideals," Sociological 
Review, April 191 3, and Neale's Monthly, April 191 3 ; 
in French, in Les Etats-Unis et la France, Bibliotheque 
" France-Amerique," Paris, Alcan, 1914. 
24 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

which is admitted in his State may not 
be allowed by the Nation, or the reverse. 

For example (to cite instances in one field 
only, in which a recent statute has brought 
out the discrepancies), a man may keep a 
mistress in either of two adjacent States, but 
he becomes a national criminal if he takes 
her from one State to another, or even if he 
pays for her transportation across the dividing- 
line between them (results following from the 
provisions of the Mann " White Slave " law). 
He may be legitimately married in one State 
but find himself living in concubinage if he 
moves to another. He may be married with 
all proper formality, only to find that his 
earlier divorce does not hold in his new 
residence and that he can be charged with 
bigamy. He may be a free and honourable 
citizen, in short, in one State, and be arrested 
as a criminal if he crosses the invisible line 
that separates the disparate State juris- 
dictions. 

Besides giving the legal profession a hand- 
some living, this has a twofold effect upon 
the citizen : it makes him afraid of law, 
fearful of doing something forbidden, captious 

25 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

and hypocritical also in his judgments of others. 
There are too many categories of offence ; and 
the moral fault becomes sadly confused in 
his judgment with the legal crime. Besides 
this he becomes a devotee of law, of legisla- 
tion, or social control, of paternalism in 
government. Instead of revolting against 
too much control, against the restraint upon 
his liberties, he himself adopts the same 
weapon and seeks the cure of all the ills of 
life by easy, superficial, unenforceable legisla- 
tion. As I shall show further below, the 
artificial and impossible neutrality of many 
Americans in this crisis results from this 
habit of mind, re-enforced, as it has been, 
by the injunctions of the national govern- 
ment. 

It is interesting to note, however, that there 
is one sphere — that of industry — in which this 
predominance of legislative control, with its 
resulting habit of mind, had not until recently 
begun to penetrate. The almost lawless 
growth of American industries has permitted 
extraordinary abuses and acts of personal 
misconduct, and has resulted in colossal 
industrial malformations of the character of 
26 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

combinations, trusts, and products of high 
finance. The recent capricious and more or 
less " galvanic " attempts to correct these 
abuses by one of the two jurisdictions, the 
national, has brought out schemes from the 
other, that of the States, which sane and 
prudent authorities have frequently pro- 
nounced not only stupid but crazy. The 
resort to direct legislation, according to the 
habit of mind just mentioned, to cure this 
evil or that, to reform this abuse or that, 
to produce this virtue and that, has never 
been so clearly in evidence as during the 
ten years preceding the outbreak of this 
war. 

But up to the last decade it was true that 
commercial individualism had its home in the 
United States. There was no limit to specu- 
lation, no bridle on " big business," no hero 
like the industrial hero, no career like that 
of the " petroleum king " or the " steel 
magnate." While a coUectivist and " puri- 
tan " in moral and social matters and a 
" paternalist " in his view of governmental 
functions, the average American up to 1900 
was a radical individualist in commercial and 

27 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

industrial affairs. Strange as it may seem, 
American life combined with the strictest 
possible moral and social censorship an un- 
heard-of industrial licence. 

The other fact mentioned above — that of 
the American's exclusive interest in domestic 
matters — is of still greater importance to us. 
Its causes and justification may be considered 
in some detail ; its bearing on the present 
situation is taken up below. 



HI 

ABSORBING INTERNAL PROBLEMS 

Among the great internal problems to which 
the Americans have been obliged to give 
constant attention we may enumerate those 
which present most interest just now. 

The " negro problem " involves a series 
of questions attaching to that of the political 
status conferred upon the enormous popula- 
tion of negroes or " coloured people " living 
in the southern States. In certain States the 
28 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

predominance of the negro vote has led to 
crises approaching in gravity those of actual 
revolution. Certain of the southern States 
have practically disfranchised the negro, in 
contravention to the Fifteenth Amendment to 
the national Constitution. The problems of 
the assimilation of the blacks, of their fran- 
chise, their social status, their education, have 
absorbed much of the social interest and 
political wisdom of the country since 1865. 
As a fact, the act of enfranchisement has 
never been everywhere enforced. 

Problems of population, arising from free 
immigration and the segregation of foreign- 
born peoples, have been of equal urgency. 
The possibility of the formation of foreign 
groups working for their own interests, sup- 
porting their own candidates at elections, 
exercising a " solid vote " in favour of certain 
measures and policies, both local and national, 
influencing more or less legitimately the 
opinions of candidates and shaping the party 
platforms — all these dangers have been forced 
upon the attention of the nation in concrete 
and alarming cases. Never has the question 
of the control of foreign influences, operating 

29 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

in domestic affairs, been so acute and critical 
as in the present generation. 

Added to these, certain chronic questions 
of national importance in the economic realm 
have never ceased to trouble the public mind. 
The tariff question has been not only or 
mainly one of economic, but one of sectional 
and class controversy. The southern States 
en bloc have advocated free trade up to the 
development, in the last twenty years, of 
manufactures in these States ; while the 
industrial centres of New England and the 
east have been determined in their support 
of high tariff legislation. 

The development of class interests, as 
between agricultural and industrial localities, 
the spread of labour agitation in view of the 
abnormal growth of capitalistic and manu- 
facturing combinations, disputes within the 
labour organizations over questions of nation- 
ality and creed — all these things have pre- 
vented the public from taking the wider 
outlook upon the world and entering into 
the questions in which Europe was interested. 

The result has been a condition of national 
isolation. To this isolation thus produced 
30 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

many minor influences have also contributed. 
There has been in American education a 
surprising neglect of historical study. The 
schools have themselves felt the lack of unity 
of policy from State to State, and sectionalism 
has crept into the instruction and even into 
the text-books of English and American 
history. The school boy and girl have studied 
the American Revolution and the Civil War, 
not always presented from an unbiased point 
of view — a state of things stimulating to 
American patriotism, perhaps, but not produc- 
tive of breadth and sympathy in respect to 
the greater movements of international for- 
tune. The instruction in the English lan- 
guage — that great symbol of national unity 
and vehicle of historical tradition — has been 
insufiicient and too often uninspired. Added 
to this, the actual geographical isolation, 
reinforced by a political policy in the same 
sense, has tended to encourage a sense of 
unconcern and safety, which is reflected in 
the national defence. A small army, and 
until recently a quite inadequate navy, have 
borne witness to this public insouciance. 
All this fully justifies us, from the considera- 

31 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

tion of the nature and history of American 
public Hfe, in saying that at the commence- 
ment of the war there was in the country no 
general interest in foreign questions, but, on 
the contrary, a pronounced preoccupation 
with matters of industry and domestic politics. 



IV 

EXTERNAL POLICY OF NATIONAL ISO- 
LATION : WASHINGTON AND MONROE 

The national isolation of the Americans is 
not only a geographical fact, supplemented 
as this is by a moral atmosphere well con- 
formed to it ; it is also an explicit political 
doctrine. Such a counsel of prudence ema- 
nates from the " father of his country," 
George Washington.* To him is attributed 

• " 'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent 
alliances with any portion of the foreign world." 
" Europe has a set of primary interests which to us 
have none, or a very remote, relation. Hence she 
must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes 
of which are essentially foreign to our concerns." — 
From Washington's " Farewell Address." 

3« 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

the maxim enjoined by his successors,* which 
has remained the foundation-stone of Ameri- 
can policy, to the effect that " entangling 
foreign alliances " were to be avoided. It is 
the spirit of this maxim, born of prudence 
and foresight, that has inspired the series of 
great American Secretaries who have presided 
over the Department of State. 

The formulation, however, of this policy 
became much more explicit in the " Monroe 
doctrine." President Monroe, in his Message 
to Congress in 1823, and other Presidents 
who followed him, although differing as to 
the applications of the " doctrine," have 
aimed at securing that the international 
status quo, the equilibrium of the European 
Powers, in their possessions in the American 
hemisphere, should remain unaltered. This 
is the substance of the declaration of policy 
of the United States, whether or not it is to 
be enforced by actual war. If the European 
Powers once recognized the " doctrine," a 
pause would be given to their rivalries, aggres- 

* " Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with 
all nations, entangling alliances with none." — Jeffer- 
son's Inaugural Address, 1801. 

c 33 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

sions, etc., in which American interests were 
sure to be continually involved. As a matter 
of history, everybody knows that this policy 
has been recognized in fact, if not always in 
theory, by the Powers of Europe. No one 
of them has driven its dissent to the point 
of actual armed opposition. 

The United States has never had occasion 
to defend this thesis by force. Whether it 
is to be considered " international bluff," as 
it has been called, or long-sighted and prudent 
policy, it has accomplished its end ; for since 
Monroe there have been no military expedi- 
tions to the Americas from Europe having 
territorial expansion in view. 

This policy, negative in its character, is 
still the one positive doctrine of American 
foreign policy. Its effect upon the people 
has been to confirm them in an isolation which, 
while in the first instance political, is also 
moral and social. It has removed from 
actual politics the host of questions that 
would otherwise have arisen in the affairs of 
the nation. This is generally recognized by 
writers on American affairs. 

But there are two other more subtle and 

34 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

psychological consequences of Monroeism to 
which I would call attention. 

First, there results the feeling, quite honour- 
able and loyal, that such a doctrine carries 
or implies its reverse — that is, the engagement 
of the United States in turn not to undertake 
any sort of adventure beyond the domestic 
province thus established, that is outside the 
Americas. If, as I have heard it said, we ask 
Europe not to meddle here, do we not in 
turn agree not to meddle there ? If the 
interests of America, of which we reserve to 
ourselves the guardianship, forbid the inter- 
ference of other Powers, are we not thus our- 
selves shut up to the Americas, finding here, 
and here only, our sphere of influence ? 

As a matter of fact, this is not merely a 
sentimental effect of Monroeism in the minds 
of many Americans ; it is understood by very 
many to be part of the doctrine itself. Monroe 
himself said in his " Message " that the United 
States had no intention of taking part in the 
internal affairs of Europe. Those who do not 
know the subsequent history of the doctrine 
accordingly say : " certainly, it must be re- 
ciprocal ; it must act both ways." 

35 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

This by no means follows, however. The 
Monroe doctrine formulates a policy with 
regard to American territory and interests 
exclusively ; it has nothing to say, either in 
form or meaning, as to American policy in 
regard to Europe or to American interests in 
other parts of the world. 

Nevertheless, it is easy to see the force of 
this natural confusion in the public mind. 
So far from finding European politics of vital 
interest, so far from needing an excuse for 
shutting themselves up in domestic affairs, 
the wider interest, so far as it exists, is actually 
discouraged and suppressed by the operation 
of the one public international policy they 
have. Why interest ourselves in what does 
not concern us and in what, in any case, we 
are bound to take no active part ? — these 
are the queries which the American brought 
to the consideration of European questions 
before this war broke out. And this accounts 
also for the strange phenomenon, so striking 
to the foreign observer, presented by those 
Americans who, reading war reports, acclaim 
this man one side's victory, that man the 
victory of the other side, all with common 

36 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

good nature, all united in their sense of 
security and isolation ! What a screen of 
asbestos hung before the scene ! What a 
barrier to be overcome before the tide of 
deeper conviction can reach and carry away 
these men and women ! 

Another, the second of the effects to which 
I have referred, is the attitude engendered by 
Monroeism toward the American Govern- 
ment itself. If the people have no vital 
interest in foreign affairs, if the Government 
itself must " steer clear " in principle of all 
interference in things non-American, then the 
handling of all such matters becomes a matter 
of routine to be managed at Washington. The 
Department of State is there for that pur- 
pose — to warn off foreign aggressors from 
American territory and to inform foreign 
applicants for aid and comfort that their 
quarrel among themselves is no affair of ours. 
This has been the American state of mind. 
The Secretary of State is competent to act 
in matters of foreign concern ; and even the 
political parties, the agents or representatives 
of what it is vital for the country to vote 
upon, do not concern themselves with the 

37 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

foreign views of the candidate who, if elected 
President, is to choose the Secretary of State. 
Compare with this the interest taken in France 
or England in the views and careers, past 
and future, of possible Ministers of Foreign 
Affairs. 

In this we see a striking illustration, in a 
new form to be sure, of what I have called 
the docility of the Americans, their attitude 
of confidence in legislative and executive 
authority. They are ready to accept the 
decision of the one who is placed by the popular 
mandate in the position to inform and com- 
mand. A most notable case of this in the 
realm of foreign affairs is that presented by 
the popular response to the call to arms in 
the war with Spain — the latest American war 
and the most illuminating as to the present- 
day sentiment of the country. It may be 
safely said that but for the explosion of the 
battleship Maine in the harbour of Havana 
there would have been no war, apart from 
possible later complications. It is further 
to be said that the explosion of the Maine 
was not a sufficient cause for war, and would 
not have been so considered in the minds of 

38 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

the American people, apart from the influence 
of the national Administration.* The causes 
of the explosion were not known, the respon- 
sibility was not fixed. The real questions at 
issue were not affected by it. But the destruc- 
tion of the Maine was made a casus belli 
by the Administration, which was carried 
away itself, no doubt, by the first wave of 
popular indignation. But it was the Admini- 
stration that led. The people followed the 
leader. 

How many Maines have been destroyed in 
this war, not always under ambiguous circum- 
stances ! But popular indignation without 
leadership has so far not sufficed to put an 
end to the national hesitation. What would 
not America be doing to-day if the McKinley 
administration, not to mention other govern- 
ments less cautious, were at the helm of 
State ? And what indignities without number 
have the American people endured, hiding 
their confusion under the cover of a national 
policy of isolation ! t 

* Including the Houses of Congress. 
t " Had the United States lived up to its moral 
traditions and fulfilled its duty, if only to the extent 

39 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 



PACIFISM AND NON-RESISTANCE 
THEORIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

This feeling of national isolation has been 
made more conscious by reason of certain 
other movements, noticeable in recent years. 
Various motives mingle in what passes, in a 
large sense, for " pacifism." The spread of 
legitimate, though extreme, pacifist doctrines 
was the greater and the more thorough because 

of protesting its indignation and expressing its 
horror, many if not most of these unspeakable crimes 
would not have been committed. And — what is 
more important still, perhaps — the other and weaker 
neutral States would have found leadership and 
rallying-place in the country to which they naturally 
looked for guidance. 

" The exaggerated requirements of political neu- 
trality, combined with an extreme legalistic and 
inflexible correctness at Washington, produced in 
the people of the United States a condition which 
appeared to Europeans to be a sort of moral lethargy. 
It also exposed them fatally to the charges of com- 
mercialism and falsity to their national ideals." — 
From the author's article " La Neutralite," Foi et 
Vie, Paris, July i, 191 5. 
40 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

of the absence of any actual reason, political 
or moral, for not accepting them. If pacifism 
and internationalism had spread in France to 
a degree to endanger the national defence, 
what might be expected in America, where 
there were no foreign complications to be 
feared ? Yet it is an interesting commentary 
upon the isolation of the United States that 
even the forms of foreign interrelation pro- 
posed by the " internationalism " of labour 
were little understood or advocated in America. 
The detachment of the country extended even 
to the schemes to assure international peace. 
The working classes welcomed unionism and 
certain militant kinds of syndicalism at home, 
and class feeling was extremely high, notably 
as between capital and labour ; but the organi- 
zation of the working class in international 
forms, together with the programme of inter- 
national union for economic warfare, had not 
made great headway. 

Pacifism had its ally, moreover, in certain 
forms of semi-philosophical thought prevalent 
in America. The non-resistance theory of the 
Quakers was historical, dating from colonial 
times in certain States, Pennsylvania particu- 

41 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

larly. But the Quakers themselves had shown, 
in times of storm and stress, that their blood 
was redder than their doctrine would lead one 
to suspect. The newer forms of sentimen- 
talism current in the United States, however, 
have a far different effect on the national 
character. They advise a life of abstraction, 
from which the contemplation of evil and 
suffering is banished, a sort of auto-suggestion 
of ease and happiness, a softness of feeling 
which refuses to recognize pain and the need 
of struggle and effort, a moral dilettantism 
passing by the name and posing in the form 
of religious sanctity. " Christian Science," 
" New Thought," " The Glad Philosophy," the 
revival of certain forms of Indian mysticism, 
the theories of mental healing and Christian 
therapeutics, all have in common this teaching 
of withdrawal from the strenuous life — the 
palliation, by a sort of moral narcotism, of 
personal and moral ills. A philosophy of life 
is taught moving between the two poles of a 
pragmatism which suppresses all absolute ideals, 
and a mysticism which counsels life without 
pain and contemplation without effort. As 
result — the peace at any price, combined with 
42 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

the complaisant religiosity, of Mr. W. J. 
Bryan. 

In all this the apostles of pacifism — often 
sincere and robust enough themselves — have 
had a less worthy ally. Appeals to high 
motives of duty and honour, to ideals of 
universal value, seem to meet with less sponta- 
neous response than formerly, at least in 
certain sects ; while reaction against insult 
and affirmation in support of high moral 
obligations of an international sort seem less 
pronounced and less implacable. 

Entertaining such a feeling, it is not strange 
that the Americans have not realized the signi- 
ficance of their own recent political history. 
The nation has found itself committed by the 
course of events to a foreign policy that goes 
far beyond Monroeism. The diplomatic pro- 
gramme of the " open door " in China, the 
conquests of the Spanish War in the Philip- 
pines and Porto Rico, the interference in Cuba, 
altruistic as its motive was, the acquisition 
of the Hawaian Islands, the participation 
in the Algeciras Conference, and above all the 
extensive and creditable part taken by the 
United States in The Hague conferences and 

43 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

conventions, all brought upon the country new 
duties and obligations of a positive sort. Inten- 
tionally or not, the foreign policy of the nation, 
embarked on smooth waters, has drifted into 
unexpected breakers. It is, of course, too late 
to undo all this with honour ; what self- 
respecting American would wish to do so ? * 
But it is a result of the general unconcern and 
apparent indifference as regards foreign affairs 
that its import is not at all realized — apart 
from one or two noble voices that have pro- 

* It is surprising that statesmen should suppose 
that a policy of commercial expansion is possible 
along with one of political isolation ; as if the great 
interests of the national life could be separated in 
any such way. Commercial interests require political 
sanctions, treaties, agreements ; they encounter 
rivalries and engender jealousies. Economic forces 
play in and through most international controversies. 
Foreign enterprises must be supported, foreign invest- 
ments made secure, the lives and property of foreign 
residents amply protected by their own Government. 
Yet in the midst of the paralysis of foreign diplomacy 
— due to the policy of isolation carried to the point 
of the utter abandonment of American Hves and 
property as in Mexico — the President delivered an 
address (at Columbus, December lo, 191 5) on Ameri- 
can " provincialism in business " ! 

44 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

claimed the binding and reciprocal character 
of The Hague Conventions. Why are such 
conventions signed, and what is their force, 
if no obligations are involved in respect to their 
observance and enforcement ? There is no 
answer to this question. 

There were, further, before the war, other 
facts which contributed to the general ten- 
dency to what may be described as a certain 
moral neutrality. While the foreign elements 
in the American population are very greatly 
in the minority, still they are grouped, some- 
times locally, more often morally, in a way 
which reveals itself even in a most superficial 
review of the whole. The bitterness of certain 
groups against the countries from which they 
have been driven by persecution, by some form 
of ill-being, by intolerance, by bad government, 
or for whatever other sufficient reason, is kept 
alive by associations, leagues, newspapers, 
plots — a hundred means which, to say the 
least, do not contribute to the unity of national 
feeling. The hatred of the Polish Jews for 
Russia, that of the Irish " patriots " for 
England, the rancour of Armenians and Syrians 
against Turkey, the bitterness of Socialists of 

45 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

all types against absolutism, and of anarchists 
against all government — all these make them- 
selves heard in the country of free speech. 
Every sort of race and interrace prejudice has 
its agents, and many have their bureaux of 
propaganda in the United States. The Russo- 
phobists and the Anglophobists disport them- 
selves beside the alarmists of the Yellow-peril 
and the Black-menace, among the ill-assimi- 
lated foreign and naturalized populations. To 
these we now see added the most powerful 
and most disturbing group of all — the pro- 
German or so-called German-American. A 
large part of the foreign population shows 
itself to have a second country ; and the 
anxious question as to many of these groups 
is : does America really come first ? 

Is it surprising that one finds very wide- 
spread the sentiment : surely we have diffi- 
culties enough at home, without meddling in 
the affairs of others ! This sentiment takes 
on many forms, from those of ignorance and 
preoccupation to that of the cynicism of the 
Administration, which, confessing at Indian- 
apolis the bankruptcy of its diplomacy, 
declared in effect : " Let the Mexicans fight 

46 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

it out ; they have the right to kill one 
another ! " 



VI 

PARTY POLICIES AND LEGISLATION 

In the realm of the political, more narrowly 
defined, the evidence is the same in character. 
The political parties in the United States, since 
the Civil War removed the great issue of human 
slavery from the sphere of discussion, have 
devoted themselves to domestic questions. 
The Democratic party, inheriting the tradition 
of " States Rights " and Free Trade, have claimed 
to represent a policy of democratic enfranchise- 
ment, over against capitalism, bureaucracy, 
special privilege, national expansion. The 
Republican party has advocated the rights of 
the negroes, constitutionalism, federalism, pro- 
tective tariff, conservative legislation. The 
tendencies of the Democrats have revealed 
themselves in sporadic, capricious, and more or 
less futile measures, often lacking historical 
precedent and failing to carry the conviction 
of the voters. We may cite among the latest 

47 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

of these : free silver, referendum, the recall 
of officials, woman's suffrage. 

Besides these opposed parties others, such 
as the National Prohibition, the Labour, and 
the Progressive party (the last being the 
newest and most extreme in its proposal of 
untried novelties, looking to " reform "), have 
advocated each the measure of its choice which 
had not yet been taken up by either of the 
two great parties. The elections since the 
Civil War have been contested practically, 
however, by the Democrats and Republicans. 

The point to note is that in all this party 
struggle there is scarcely a note of international 
policy, no demand for or against any departure 
in the matter of foreign relations. Save vague 
allusions to the Monroe doctrine and cautions 
against " foreign adventure," there is practi- 
cally nothing. Since the acquisition of the 
Philippines, there has been more or less dis- 
cussion as to the ultimate fate of these islands, 
and public men have found it necessary to 
disclaim any but generous intentions regarding 
them ; but so slight is the interest excited that 
I doubt if half the voting population can tell 
where the Philippines are, or what exactly is 

48 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

their standing as part of the territory of the 
Union. The ever-recurrent tariff question is 
discussed almost exclusively from the point 
of view of national economy, revenue, labour, 
balance of trade ; hardly at all in its inter- 
national bearings. 



VII 
WHAT IS NEEDED IN THIS CRISIS 

We are led, therefore, to certain general 
conclusions, confirmed alike by the history and 
the social psychology of the American people. 

The popular philosophy of life, speaking for 
the mass of those who represent public opinion, 
while assuming the moral principles of Christian 
ethics, and for the most part enforcing them, 
have found themselves unprepared for any 
prompt evaluation and decision in the face of 
the extraordinary crisis that is now before 
Europe and before them. What we may call 
the " forms of thought," necessary to a truly 
international point of view, have not been 
created. Thanks to their national and moral 
isolation, there are none of those " national 

D 49 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

aspirations " which have been the rallying- 
point of legitimate patriotic sentiment in other 
countries, and also for that sort of bargaining 
which finds the price of intervention in the war 
in the cession of territory or the recovery of 
estranged populations. " National aspiration " 
is too often the euphemistic translation of 
" enlightened self-interest " ; and so far as 
the American's enlightened self-interest goes, 
it Hes too evidently on the side of neutrality. 
It is too much to expect that any nation, 
separate from others and busy with its own 
internal problems of extreme urgency, its own 
internal enemies of extreme vigilance, and its 
own internal maladies of extreme gravity, will 
turn at once into paths of unknown issue, 
however strong its desire to see others succeed 
in reaching the goal of their ideals. 

What such a nation needs at such a crisis, 
and needs the more the greater its humanity 
and the more sound its sympathies, is the 
great leader. The Americans have the humanity 
and the sympathy ; they are fit for great 
resolves. But this is not enough. It is to 
the exceptional individual, not to the people 
at large, to whom we look for the wider vision 
SO 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

by which their humanity and sympathy are 
to be guided. If the Americans have lacked 
in this crisis until now, it is in the wider vision 
which only the great Leader could present to 
their eyes with sufficient force and persuasion. 



SI 



LECTURE II 

THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON 
AMERICAN OPINION 



LECTURE II 



NEGATIVE EFFECTS : THE LOW STATE 
OF NATIONAL SENTIMENT REVEALED 

At the outset certain consequences of the 
war, more or less negative in character, impress 
us. The war has put in evidence, in a most 
striking way, the state of mind and the direc- 
tion of poHtical poHcy pointed out in the 
preceding lecture. It has revealed in the 
American people a low level of national senti- 
ment, if that sentiment is to be measured by 
sensitiveness in the face of affront, high ideals 
of national honour, and readiness to recognize 
international duties. 

The same condition of things was evident 
during the long and weary diplomatic con- 
troversy with Mexico — or rather with Huerta 

55 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

and the other Mexican " generals." We have 
found the causes of this in the operation of 
two factors : the preoccupation of the country 
with certain inherited domestic problems, aggra- 
vated by new social conditions, and the tradition 
of political isolation, formulated in the dictum 
of Washington and the doctrine of Monroe. 

The outbreak of war found the country 
largely free from bonds, save those of inter- 
course and commerce, with other nations. 
Existing treaties, generally not known in detail 
to the people at large, concerned matters of 
commerce, immigration, extradition, property, 
tariff, etc., except for the increasing body of 
agreements looking to the introduction of 
arbitration in international disputes. The 
effect of these latter was, of course, in the 
direction of making the assertion of the national 
will in military terms more and more remote ; 
and they in so far confirmed and justified, 
so far as international politics were concerned, 
the popular feeling of security and self- 
sufficiency. The effect of the proclamation 
of The Hague Conventions subscribed to by 
the American Government was of the same 
character. 

56 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 



11 

FOREIGN CULTURAL INFLUENCES: 
GERMAN EDUCATIONAL INVASION 

On the side of the internal life itself, what 
we may describe as the cultural side of the 
national consciousness, we find a similar state 
of things : on the whole a healthy indepen- 
dence, combined with a tolerant and intelligent 
cosmopolitanism. In literature, English models 
and English readers were held constantly in 
mind, with French a good second in the taste 
and appreciation of the intelligent. In science 
England, France, and Germany held about 
the same place and prestige, according to the 
department of work. In art France stood, as 
she had stood for a long period without inter- 
ruption, pre-eminent, both as concerns the 
production of art works and as the home of 
art instruction. Particularly is this true of 
painting, sculpture, and architecture, not to 
mention the minor arts of life, in which the 
unrivalled French taste imparted to the 
commonplace its refinement and grace. 

57 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

In two domains of culture, however, one 
artistic and the other practical, German 
influence has been marked during the last 
twenty or thirty years — ^music and education. 
Of the former I cannot speak with authority ; 
of the latter much might be said. 

The introduction of German methods and 
the cult of German masters in the realm of 
higher instruction began to show itself about 
1870. It reached its height fifteen years later, 
let us say in 1886. The occasion of it was 
the emergence of the American university into 
its stage of adult stature, ready to assume its 
place as over against the small college, which 
was generally theological in origin and which 
had hitherto filled the demand for higher 
training. The growing freedom of American 
thought, the lack of trained instructors, and, 
later on, the demand for research with the 
call for original investigators, found in the 
German system its most ready satisfaction. 
There was a stampede to Germany of American 
advanced students eager to secure the Ph.D. 
degree in two years. This degree became, if 
not the sine qua non, at least the most impor- 
tant qualification for the professor's chair. 

58 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

Almost all the present generation of American 
scholars and teachers of university grade have 
been through this German apprenticeship. 
The present writer speaks here from his own 
experience, the normal one at the time of his 
graduation in the United States (1884). 

In the last fifteen years, however, things 
have changed. The tide has turned ; and at 
the outbreak of the war it was flowing in non- 
German channels. The American Universities 
have declared their independence, and offer to 
students facilities equal to those of any other 
country ; American scientific men and scholars 
are the peers of the Germans, English, and 
French ; methods of instruction have been 
developed which are adapted to the needs of 
the national life. 

Apart from these intrinsic reasons, moreover, 
there has grown up in America a body of 
positive criticisms of German methods and 
aims in education which has impaired the 
prestige of German scholarship. This latter 
has been characterized as pedantic in its 
apparent thoroughness, lacking in construc- 
tiveness in its minuteness, intolerant in its 
assumption of superiority, unadaptable in its 

59 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

nationalism. The German fault of obscureness 
penetrates all its products. 

In view of these criticisms, German influence, 
we may fairly say, was permanently diminished 
before the war came on. 

This open criticism and latent dissatisfaction 
with their scholarship and culture accounts for 
the lack of sympathy for Germany among the 
American scholars and teachers which has so 
astonished and angered the Germans since the 
war began.* The men who have worked in 
Germany and who should best know that 
country are now the foremost in their con- 
demnation. The exceptions to this, among 
American professors in the institutions of 
higher learning, amount only to 2 to 8 per cent, 
(according to a recent statistical inquiry made 

* The new regulations (reported in Vorwdrts) 
governing the admission of foreign students to 
German Universities show already a certain spirit 
of retaliation. Among them one finds the rules 
that no single foreign group in any institution shall 
in number exceed 15 per cent, of the entire foreign 
attendance, and that no foreigner shall be named 
assistant or famulus unless there are no German 
applicants. These, together with the new financial 
requirements, seem aimed to hit the Americans. 
60 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

by Prof. MacCook and printed in the ISIew York 
Evening Post), those with sympathies for the 
Allies being 92 to 98 per cent. This result is 
the more striking, seeing that the professors of 
German birth found in some of the faculties 
were not excluded from the inquiry. 

This decline of German influence in matters 
intellectual and literary was accentuated by 
the widening knowledge of French and English 
literary history. Visits of leading men from 
both these countries were arranged at various 
university centres. The French visitors were 
very notable.* M. Brunetiere came to the 
Johns Hopkins University,! Baltimore, in 1897 
and lectured in other cities. He was followed 

* A series of leading English authorities have 
brought reinforcement and aid to the British 
entente with the United States from a much earlier 
date ; among them one thinks at once of such names 
as those of Kelvin, Poulton, LI. Morgan, A. Wright 
in science, Lord Bryce and Sir F. Pollock in public 
affairs, and Matthew Arnold — not to go back to 
Charles Dickens — in literature. 

t The TurnbuU Foundation. There are numerous 
lectureships of the same sort in the United States, 
such as the Trask Lectures at Princeton University, 
the Lowell Lectures at Boston, etc., which have often 

61 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

by a series o£ writers and critics of the first 
rank — from R. Doumic in 1898 to E. Bou- 
troux in 1907 — who were invited by the 
" cercle fran^ais " of Harvard University and 
later on by the Hyde Foundation, a lecture 
foundation whose activities have been developed 
by the establishment of the regular annual 
exchange-professorship at the Sorbonne and 
of the lecture courses given by American 
scholars in the universities of France (Harvard 
Foundation) — the latter under the direct 
patronage of the Ministere de 1' Instruction 
publique. 

The advantages which France and England 
presented have also become better known to 
American students, whose devotion to origi- 
nality and clarity draws them to the French, 
and whose admiration of sober empiricism, 
combined with high scientific imagination, 
brings them to the British. 

been held by Frenchmen. Such authorities as 
E. Picard, P. Janet, and, quite recently, H. Bergson 
have accepted these appointments. 



62 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 



III 

FRENCH INFLUENCE IN ART AND 
LITERATURE 

In regard more particularly to the French 
influence in general in America — not speaking 
of scholars, but of the people — one is struck 
both with the general lack of information about 
the French and also by the positiveness of 
certain impressions which have been current. 
The lack of information extended to practi- 
cally all the serious sides of French life, except 
fine art and certain branches of literature. 
The respect for French art, including those 
manifestations of taste included in the realm 
of modes, cuisine, manufactures in the domains 
of luxury, etc., was unbounded and undivided. 
The stream of art students to Paris matched 
that of students in the philosophical and lite- 
rary faculties to Berlin. The notable compe- 
titions open to the world (such as the plan of 
the proposed constructions at the University 
of CaHfornia) were often secured by French- 
men ; and French portrait-painters and sculp- 

63 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

tors were always sure of an enthusiastic 
welcome and remunerative stay in the United 
States. 

The American's knowledge of French litera- 
ture was limited practically to the pages choisies 
from the classics — Racine, Moliere, Montaigne, 
Bossuet — set for study in the courses in French 
in the schools and universities. This introduc- 
tion to French was curtailed in recent years, 
moreover, by the necessity, which came in 
with the wave of Germanism of which I have 
spoken, either of dividing the student's time 
with German or of making French alternative 
with German in the student's choice. Even in 
the southern States, where before the Civil 
War the tradition of literary culture was 
embodied in French models — a tradition going 
back to the French culture in Louisiana — the 
" modem languages " taken together have 
succeeded French, and the student reads 
" Hermann und Dorothea " along with his 
" Athalie." 

In the larger circle of readers outside the 
universities a more unfortunate impression of 
French literature has prevailed — an impression 
giving body and confirmation, unfortunately, 
64 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

to the tourist's reports of the Hghtness, the 
frivolity, of the French. This impression was 
gathered from the books the tourist brought 
home from his visit to Paris, and the accounts 
of what he had seen and heard in Parisian 
theatres. The tourist when in Paris sees the 
museums and attends the art salons, then 
turns to the life of the Capital. He employs 
perhaps the guide who accosts him on the 
boulevards and engages to show him the true, 
the secret, Paris. One may imagine what 
he sees, and with what reports he returns 
to America, to tell of his adventures in 
France ! 

Fed on such reports, which had no serious 
correctives, it is no wonder that the Americans 
generally have considered the French frivolous 
and light. The subjects treated and the 
manner of treating them, in many of the 
romances and theatrical pieces of recent years, 
taken to America and received as representative 
of the best talent and highest workmanship, 
did not remove this impression. The field of 
Hterature, including the romance and the play, 
is, to the American as the Englishman, one 
for all classes of readers ; it is not a field 

E 65 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

divided between low green pastures laid out 
for the lambs, where the virtues grow and 
the innocent regale themselves, and the high 
storm-swept steeps reserved for the psycholo- 
gist and the student of life — ^where the rugged 
plants of thorn and heather struggle to live in 
the blasts of the weather of passion and crime. 
In American and English literature there are 
no special classes of books or objects of art 
meant for young girls. The theory and 
practice alike are that the young girls are to 
be found everywhere, and that they have the 
right to see everything in art. Life, it is 
claimed, is broader than art ; much in life 
has to be covered and hidden from the eye 
of modesty and inexperience ; and it is not 
the part of art to reproduce and expose to 
view this hidden part. Art has not the right 
to be indecent. 

It results that the Americans have too often 
supposed these things to be the chosen things, 
the preferred subjects — to reveal an unrestrained 
licence. Not knowing the distinctions of clien- 
tele which are present in the mind of the 
French writer — the separate classes of people 
for whom one or the other author writes — 
66 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

the American reader supposes his studies of 
abnormal psychology or of passional crime to 
reach the public generally, old and young, 
men and boys — as would be the case with 
them. 

The Americans say that if this sort of 
material is used by the best masters of literary 
art, and if it meets the demands of current 
literary taste, then the French life must be 
more free, more " advanced " in certain direc- 
tions, than the Anglo-Saxon. 

Whatever may be said on one side or the 
other, from the point of view of ethics, social 
psychology, and philosophy of life, the fact 
is as I have stated it. I do not pass judgment ; 
I should make many reservations on both sides 
if I did. I only state it in order to include it 
among the things which seem to have hindered 
the proper appreciation of French culture in 
America. A great liberalizing of American 
standards in literature and art is in progress, 
and the war has produced a revelation of 
French virtues to the entire world. Already 
the Americans begin to see that they have 
listened to the voices of the ignorant and have 
taken too seriously certain superficial aspects 

67 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

of the French character. These are the true 
correctives.* 

IV 

THE AMERICAN'S UNDERSTANDING 
OF NEUTRALITY 

So far as foreign affairs go, still speaking of 
the more negative effects of the war, one thing 
appears in a strong light : the American's way 
of looking upon and preserving neutrality. I 
have pointed out elsewhere "j" the necessity of 

* Cf. the author's appreciation of the French in 
" France and the War," New York, Appleton, 1916 
(also in the Sociological Review, London, April 191 5 ; 
see also the same Review, " French and American 
Ideals," April 191 3). 

t See the journal Foi et Vie, Paris, July i, 1915. 
From this article, which has not appeared in English, 
I quote the following passage : " It is plain that 
the condition of political neutrality involves certain 
reciprocal engagements. A neutral nation should 
expect, and should be ready to require, due respect, 
on the part of belligerents, for the rights attaching 
to neutrality. The international rules which define 
neutrality also establish the rights of neutrals. In 
so far as submarine warfare, for example, is conducted 

68 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

distinguishing between the political neutrality 
which is decreed by a neutral government, and 
which properly extends to every loyal citizen, 
and the personal or moral neutrality which finds 
it necessary to suppress personal sympathy 
and to conceal individual opinion. This latter 
is to my mind not only dangerous and futile ; 
it is also impossible in fact and immoral in 
idea. One may do nothing to embarrass his 

in a way to interfere with neutral traffic, the obliga- 
tion of neutrality is lessened or annulled ; and the 
question of the enforcement of its rights becomes 
urgent to the neutral State, 

" Again, political neutrality cannot condone the 
violation of positive covenants of any sort. Such 
violations at once destroy the basis upon which the 
pledge of neutrality is given ; and the neutral State 
is again called upon to consider the question of the 
suspension of its neutrality. This case is presented 
by the violation, in the present war, of The Hague 
Conventions, to which, in certain instances, both 
groups of States, those now at war, and those hitherto 
neutral, were signatories. So much, at least, may 
be said, even though we leave out of account the 
moral obligations of neutral States to the principles 
of humanity and right, even when they do not happen 
to have signed special treaties or conventions embody- 
ing these obligations." 

69 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

government in its policy of neutrality, but he 
cannot surrender his feelings of right and 
justice nor suppress his sympathy for the 
peoples who are struggling to maintain these 
things.* 

At the outbreak of the war the Americans 

• " In the case that the individual suppresses his 
impulses of sympathy and his acts of preference in 
favour of the cause which he considers right, he 
makes himself, it is true, a tool of political neutrality, 
but he does so under a sustained personal and moral 
pretence. On the other hand, if he cedes to the 
State his right of individual judgment and moral 
preference, accepting its decree of political neutrality 
as morally binding upon him, he then, at least for 
the time, gives up his moral autonomy and ceases 
to be a free citizen — just at the time perhaps when 
the Executive of the State is most in need of the 
direction of popular sentiment. 

" The first of these alternatives is illustrated in 
the case in which a Government enjoins upon its 
citizens to refrain from all expressions of preference. 
Taken seriously, this would mean that the people 
are to maintain an insincere indifference to the 
questions of such gravity as those involving war and 
peace — to chafe under an intolerable self-repression, 
the more difficult as their patriotism is the more 
ardent and their humanity the more cathoHc. If 
70 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

were enjoined by their Government to main- 
tain a careful neutrality. They accepted this 
injunction with the docility which charac- 
terizes their attitude toward the national 
Government ; and endeavoured to conform to 
it in the moral no less than in the political 
sense. They have mistakenly considered it 
their duty to express no opinion, to show no 
preference, to limit themselves to impartial 
and platonic declarations of a vaguely humane 
sort. Hence it is that their acts have gone so 
much further than their words ; for their deeds 
of sympathy and succour have built for them 
a monument in the hearts of the Allied Nations. 
It would not be in place here to criticize 

it deceives nobody, it is useless : if it deceives any- 
body, it is hypocritical and base. 

" In the sphere of morals, these complications 
become acute ; since whether the neutral State is 
to assert its rights and defend the conventions signed 
in good faith depends in democratic countries upon 
the sentiment of the people and upon the free expres- 
sion of their will. Here one sees the pernicious eifect 
of efforts of a government to control or suppress the 
expression of public opinion in such a crisis as that 
now upon the civilized world." — From the article 
cited in the last note. 

71 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

the American Government's policy. There are 
great differences of opinion on the subject 
among the Americans themselves. My object 
is not controversial. I wish to point out, 
merely, that this understanding of neutrality, 
mistaken as I believe it is, accounts for the 
apparent moral inertia of the Americans' 
response to the hideous and damnable features 
of the German methods of warfare, and their 
apparent callousness to injury and insult. In 
this, as in other national crises, they have waited 
to be led, taking their cue from the Department 
of State. As long as they are advised to be 
morally neutral they will endeavour to appear 
so. They are taking the same attitude, indeed, 
toward the indignities, the crimes, committed 
against themselves — the shameless violations 
of their country's neutrality itself by German 
agents — that they show at the commission of 
the same sort of crimes against others. If this 
is a fault, it is a fault of excess of patience and 
generosity ; it is less a fault than a lack — a 
lack both on the side of political education and 
on the side of moral independence. It is the 
defect of their political education that they 
do not see the world-character of the issues at 
72 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

stake in this war — issues in which the United 
States is essentially interested — and it is the 
defect of their moral independence that they 
do not lead their Government, themselves 
determining the kind of neutrality they wish 
and its limitations, instead of tolerating repeated 
verbal promises of vigour, which lead to no 
fulfilment. 

Those who followed the movements of 
American opinion during all the period of the 
recent Mexican troubles * under the same 
Administration at Washington, know what to 
expect now, as I have already intimated — the 
same popular docihty and the same official 

• It may be added that the writer's allusions to 
Mexican affairs here and on other pages are not 
mere hearsay or second-hand impressions. Having 
been Professor in the National University of Mexico 
since 1910 — after previous official visits during the 
Diaz rigime — and present in Mexico City during much 
of the disturbed period, he has had more than the 
ordinary opportunity to form an opinion. Com- 
petent judgment on the Administration's Mexican 
policy will be found in the articles by G. L. Seeger, 
l^ew York Times, January 3, 191 5, and G. Harvey, 
North American Review^ September 191 5. 

73 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

futility. The German Foreign Office has not 
been mistaken in its reading of this page from 
the diplomatic notebook of General Huerta. 



POSITIVE EFFECTS: THE REVOLT 

OF POPULAR SENTIMENT AGAINST 

GERMANISM AND THE DEMAND FOR 

MILITARY PREPARATION 

The positive effects of the war upon American 
opinion are evident in many ways. There has 
been a reaction all along the line — a reaction 
of revolt against both the internal hindrances 
and the political trammels of which I have 
spoken. 

We note, in the first place, a growing restless- 
ness and impatience in respect to the German 
and Austrian intrigues against the neutrality 
of the country and against its laws. In view 
of the extent and variety of these crimes, one 
has wondered indeed whether the patience of 
the Government and of the people had no 
limit. They have suffered the passport, sacred 

74 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

symbol of citizenship, to be travestied, counter- 
feited, and bartered in, the rights of American 
citizens to travel and attend to their business 
to be interfered with and annulled, the proce- 
dure and organization of domestic industries 
to be undermined and endangered, the employ- 
ment of the means of intercommunication at 
home and abroad to be interrupted and abused, 
the hospitality of diplomatic residence to be 
compromised and betrayed. The meanest 
crimes against property, personal security, and 
life have gone unpunished and often un- 
reproved. The world has been about as 
much surprised at the toleration of these 
crimes as at the unblushing insistence and 
turpitude of their perpetrators.* 

All this has destroyed every vestige of 
sympathy or good feeling for Germany and 
the Germans in the minds of most Americans. 
They are no longer personally or morally 

* See Gabriel Alphaud, V Action Allemande aux 
Etats-Unis (August 2, 1914-September 23, 191 5), 
Paris, Payot, 191 5, a book which contains the official 
documents and letters of Dernburg, Dumba, etc., 
together with the notes exchanged between Washing- 
ton and Berlin. 

7S 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

neutral. How can one nation continue to have 
any relations of scrupulous neutrality and 
reciprocity with another when the second party 
to the relation is silently waging underhand 
and treacherous warfare on the first ? The 
demand for the recall of Dumba was received 
in America with the greatest delight ; it was 
hoped that the Administration was beginning 
to see that not the dignity alone but the safety 
of the country was endangered by these 
abominable Austro-German intrigues.* 

Nothing would more unify and rejuvenate 
the American sense of national unity than a 

• Since these lines were written the American 
Government has demanded the recall of the two 
German attaches, military and naval, of the German 
Embassy at Washington. This action, although in 
the right direction and tending to quiet public 
opinion, really accomplishes nothing, because it 
strikes only the agent and not the principal. These 
agents can be replaced, as in the cases of Dernburg 
and Dumba, by others sent to continue the same 
procedure under the same chief, while they them- 
selves return to Berlin to receive the iron cross ! 
With the evidence the country now has, it is a disgrace 
to continue diplomatic relations of any kind with the 
German Government. 
76 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

decision to sever relations altogether with 
peoples to whom diplomacy is a means to 
treachery and its channels those of perjury 
and fraud. 

Other effects of a very radical sort are to be 
expected from the exposure of the lamentable 
abuse of American hospitality by a group of 
people who pretend to have adopted the 
country as their own. The entire body of 
legislation and statute law on immigration 
and naturalization, on the exercise of the 
franchise by naturalized persons, on the 
penalties and sanctions of disloyalty — even 
the very definition of disloyalty — must be 
revised and made more exacting. Some more 
binding proofs of allegiance to the country 
than mere oaths of fidelity must be exacted ; 
for there are people whose conduct speaks 
louder than their oaths. What could be 
more significant than the frequent violation 
of their word of honour by German officers 
released on parole in the United States ? 
Already these demands are being heard in 
the country. Every new outrage upon the 
dignity of American citizenship increases 
their force. 

77 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

The same reaction of the national self-respect 
shows itself in movements of a more general 
order. The demand for immediate and ade- 
quate preparation for defence, and for the 
provision of war equipment in general, has 
become pronounced. Leagues * for all sorts of 
patriotic purposes have been formed — for the 
increase of the army and navy, for coast defence, 
for the improvement of the State militia in 
view of the possible demand for its use by the 
nation. The Secretary of the Navy proposes 
to supplement the regular army by a conti- 
nental army of a half-million men, made up of 
volunteers giving certain months for a term 
of years to military exercises. Actual encamp- 
ments of volunteers — the most important that 
at Plattsburg, New York — eager to be trained 
for use if war should come, have been estab- 
lished, having details of army officers as 
instructors. Added to this there is the demand 
for a propaganda to instruct the people as to 
the significance of the principles for which the 
Allied Nations are fighting : the sacredness of 

* The " National Security League " and the 
" Civic Federation " are the most important of 
these. 

78 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

nationality, the rights of small nations, respect 
for treaties and international guarantees of 
every sort, the authority of The Hague Conven- 
tions, the eHmination of the barbarous and 
inhuman in war. 



VI 

NEW ADMIRATION FOR FRANCE 
AND ENGLAND 

These positive movements in the body of 
American sentiment must give a vigorous 
impulse to the sturdy sentiment of nationality. 
It has already produced a new respect and 
veneration for those nations which are giving 
their best manhood for the maintenance of poli- 
tical liberty and public law. The Americans 
feel that the ideals of all free self-governing 
peoples are endangered as never before, and 
that France and England are fighting for 
what their own fathers fought for. They feel 
already the renewing of the historic bonds 
which bind them to France, the land to which 
they owe the achievement of the individual 
rights of equality and brotherhood, and to 

79 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

England, that to which they owe the Magna 
Charta of constitutional government. 

These positive sympathies show themselves 
in the American work of relief and aid, both 
public and private, of which I shall speak on 
another page. The relief of Belgium is a work 
of pure humanity ; both the absolute need of 
the Belgians and the equally absolute justice 
of their heroic defence appeal to all men of 
conscience and humane feeling. The response 
made to France, however, by the Americans 
has another meaning. It is not so much 
because France needs them as because they 
need to show their love and sympathy for 
France. Hospitals, physicians, nurses, ambu- 
lances, funds for every possible need of the 
troops, gifts to the treasuries of the French 
CBUvres, personal effort by act, word, and pen, 
volunteering for the army — all this expresses 
not sympathy alone, but a sense of the majesty 
of France and the sublimity of her effort for 
the highest ideals of civilization. This has 
shown itself in the spontaneous outbursts of 
enthusiasm on certain occasions, such as those 
of the opening of the French section at the 
San Francisco Exposition and the unveiling 
80 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

of the statue of Jeanne d'Arc at New York. 
In all this we see the true movement of the 
American heart, an expression which no poli- 
tical cautions of neutrahty and no internal 
suggestions of prudence have been able or 
will be able to prevent or diminish. 



VII 

NEW CONCEPTION OF DEMOCRACY: 
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES 

The great result of the war, however, upon 
American opinion is the appearance of a higher 
conception of democracy — a democracy which 
recognizes its kinship with its fellow-democ- 
racies of the world, and its duties to the prin- 
ciples of such democracy whenever and wherever 
they are assailed. After this war the United 
States will feel as never before its alliance in 
spirit and ideal with those other nations which 
are founded on principles of freedom and 
constitutionalism ; and it will have a new 
abhorrence for autocratic and militaristic 
governments and institutions. Its inter- 

F 8i 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

national obligations will be recognized and its 
treaties and conventions will be conceived in 
the spirit of binding rights and duties. 

That the Americans are capable of taking 
the point of view of international right is shown 
in certain recent cases in which the interests 
of the Nation seemed opposed to those of 
others. I may cite three questions which have 
been settled with due regard to the rights of 
foreign nations, one before the war commenced 
and two during the course of hostilities : the 
Panama Canal Tolls case, the Ship Purchase 
Bill, and that of the proposal to place an 
embargo upon the exportation of munitions 
of war to the Allied nations. 



VIII 

THE PANAMA CANAL TOLLS 
QUESTION 

The Panama Canal Tolls question involved 
the terms of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty made 
with England, which secured to the United 
States the right to construct the canal on the 
82 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

Isthmus of Panama on certain terms — terms 
upon which England conditioned the abandon- 
ment of the rights secured to her by the older 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty. One of these condi- 
tions was to the effect that the United States 
should give to all nations the same facihties 
and rates of toll for passage through the canal. 
This proposition was construed by the United 
States Congress to refer to foreign nations only, 
their contention being that the United States 
was at liberty to allow to American ships rates 
below those granted to the ships of other 
nations or to exempt them from all payment 
of toll. It is evident that such a construction, 
while placing the mercantile marines of other 
nations on an equality with reference to one 
another, still placed them all at a decided 
disadvantage with reference to that of the 
United States. For under such an exemption 
the American ships could charge lower trans- 
portation rates than any other vessels, and so 
secure the carrying trade through the canal. 
Again, a second result in favour of the Ameri- 
cans would be that there would be a movement 
of transfer of foreign ships to American register, 
in order to secure the advantages of reduction 

83 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

or exemption of tolls. This would in turn, it 
was claimed, enormously stimulate and develop 
the American mercantile marine. 

On these grounds of American interest and 
advantage, the Bill to exempt American coast- 
wise vessels from the payment of tolls was 
passed by the Congress, despite the remon- 
strance of the British Government, backed with 
practical unanimity by that of the other mari- 
time nations. It was signed, however, by 
President Taft. But in time the public, 
becoming better informed as to the negotia- 
tions preceding the signing of the treaty and 
as to the contents of the British and other 
protestations, became more and more convinced 
of the injustice of the American contention. 
This seemed to have been prompted by 
commercial and other unjudicial considerations, 
principal among which was the project to grant 
an indirect subsidy to the American mercantile 
marine. The demand for the repeal of the 
measure became insistent, and the President, the 
Administration having in the meantime changed 
hands, appealed to Congress to alter this provi- 
sion of the Act. This reconsideration was secured 
and the British contention finally prevailed. 

84 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

IX 

THE SHIP PURCHASE BILL 

The Ship Purchase Bill was a measure 
initiated by the present Administration at the 
outbreak of the war or early before. It was 
a scheme to extend the American mercantile 
marine by permitting the purchase, for entry 
into American registry, of ships built in other 
countries, thus modifying the provision before 
in force to the effect that all ships, to secure 
American registry, must be of American con- 
struction. The discussion of this measure in 
Congress during the early months of the war 
was complicated enormously by the fact that 
a fleet of German vessels formerly engaged in 
transatlantic passenger traffic (belonging prin- 
cipally to the North German Lloyd and Ham- 
burg-America Lines) were detained in the 
United States ; and it was anticipated that 
if the Bill became law these ships would be 
sold, possibly indirectly, to the American 
Government, or at least would pass into 
American hands and American registry. The 

8s 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

Germans would receive full value for the ships. 
The Bill was supported with frenzy by the 
pro-Germans in Congress, and by the pro- 
German newspaper press. But so great was 
the popular feeling and so pronounced the 
demand that no loophole be given the German 
steamship lines to recoup themselves that the 
Bill had to be withdrawn, despite the Presi- 
dent's formal assurance that the Government 
would not purchase the German ships. 

The fact that German agents in America are 
ready for any subterfuge by which to take 
advantage of American registry and the Ameri- 
can flag is shown by the case of the steamship 
Dacia, which took out American registry in 
the name of an American citizen said to be of 
German descent, for the transportation of 
cotton to a neutral port. It was only justice 
that the ship became promptly a prize of war 
of France on the high seas. Its seizure has 
been declared legal in the Prize Court. The 
actual destination of its cargo of cotton was 
an open secret. The same suspicion attaches 
to the ship Hocking, recently seized by the 
British, which is one of eleven vessels placed 
under the American flag by the same owners. 
86 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 



X 

THE EXPORTATION OF MUNITIONS 
OF WAR 

A third case, or rather a third situation, in 
which the Americans are showing themselves 
quite capable of taking the international point 
of view shows itself in the matter of the manu- 
facture and exportation of materials and muni- 
tions of war. It is, of course, clear to everybody 
that this commerce is in fact one-sided. The 
British and French have cleared the seas of all 
German means of transportation. If Germany 
and Austria bought munitions in America they 
could not transport them across the sea. The 
result is that America supplies the orders of 
the Allies while none are supplied to the 
Central Empires. 

The pro-German party in the United States 
have seized upon this fact to demand that the 
United States forbid the manufacture and sale 
of munitions of war for foreign use. They 
make much of two principal arguments. 

First, they say, it is a violation of American 

87 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

neutrality thus knowingly to supply one side 
with essential aid while not supplying the same 
aid to the other side. This is, of course, 
specious in the extreme, since the American 
market is equally open to the Germans, and 
it is their inability to enter it that causes the 
discrepancy. Furthermore, the present state 
of things is due directly to the effectiveness of 
the navies of the Allied Powers ; the request 
to remove it is the equivalent of asking the 
United States, if that country were in a position 
to do so, to discredit and embarrass the German 
army or its air-craft. The Allies have shut off 
the German market in America ; that is the 
whole case : this is legitimate warfare — and 
so much the worse for the Germans ! 

But the pro-German party have another 
argument, one that is much more effective with 
a certain class of Americans, those whom I have 
spoken of as being " soft philosophers," " false 
pacifists," persons who say " Stop killing ! " — 
as if that were the end to all argument. The 
pro-Germans insinuate to these people that the 
American munitions maintain the war. " You 
Americans," they declaim, " are continuing the 
bloodshed, you are making peace impossible, 
88 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

you are responsible for the horrible condi- 
tions in Europe ; but for American munitions 
and supplies peace would already have been 
secured." This is a real argument to the class 
of people I have mentioned. They shudder 
at war and carnage, they hope and pray for 
the peace of Europe ; and to have it said 
that they are doing all in their power to main- 
tain the war seems to them scandalous. The 
result is that there is a widespread movement 
of opinion in the United States in favour of 
influencing the Administration to forbid the 
exportation of munitions of war. It is said 
that there is likelihood of a Bill to this end being 
introduced in Congress, which would have a 
certain support, principally from members 
coming from German constituencies. 

It is the opinion, however, of the great body 
of the people that there could be no more 
gross departure from neutrality than the 
passage of such an Act. It would be a grave 
step in direct support of Germany. Moreover, 
as the Department of State has explicitly 
pointed out in its reply to the protest from the 
Austrian Government, it would be in contra- 
vention of the usages consecrated by inter- 

89 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

national law and of the stipulations of The 
Hague Conventions.* Besides, in this the 
Germans and Austrians are protesting against 
a position upon which they have themselves 
acted in recent wars, notably in that of England 
against the Boers. When, one may ask, has 
the house of Krupp refused to sell cannon to 
any nation ? 

Furthermore, as to the actual value to the 
Allies of the munitions secured in America, 
it is folly to suppose that the war would not 
be prosecuted just the same without them. 
A peace short of victory would be to America, 
as to Europe, a calamity for the present and a 
crime against future generations. The United 
States should want no such peace. 

In this again the Americans have shown a 
straightness of vision and an inflexibility of 
purpose worthy of their best traditions. There 
is no doubt that the exportation of munitions 
will be continued. 

These three instances, cited from very recent 
questions in American politics, show suffi- 

* This is admitted by German authorities, such 
as E. Zimmermann, Berliner Lokalanzeiger, June i6, 
1915. 
90 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

ciently both the mood of the people and their 
essential rectitude in international affairs. It 
is only the more desirable that their sound 
judgment should be more fully informed as 
to the fundamental issues at stake in the war, 
and that their large sympathy should be 
officially directed. If they were convinced 
that they were in honour bound to defend The 
Hague Conventions or that the principles of 
liberty established in common by the French, 
the English, and themselves were in danger of 
subversion, they would not shrink from the 
sacrifice involved in war. It is one thing to 
submit to effront and insult — to turn the other 
cheek, as it were — when one's own dignity and 
interest alone are involved ; one can under- 
stand the meaning of the words attributed to 
the President — " it is possible to be too proud 
to fight." This is true, no doubt, if the appli- 
cation of the statement be limited to circum- 
stances in which the essential functions of 
Government toward its citizens and its territory 
are not involved. But it is another thing to 
allow the small State to be crushed, the valiant 
defenders of liberty to be assailed and their 
territory invaded, to see the formula of " beyond 

91 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

good and evil " enforced upon half the civilized 
globe by methods of savagery, to hear unmoved 
the cries of drowning men and women of neutral 
countries — all this admits of no alternative 
and allows of no choice. The principles of 
chivalry and honour for a nation cannot be 
separated from those of the individual exer- 
cising his rights and performing his duties in 
the social organism. It is, then, a question 
of seeing that American national sentiment and 
its official expression really and fully reflect 
the moral feeling of the people.* It may not 

• " The President of the United States is reported 
to have said in his address on the occasion of his 
review of the Atlantic Squadron : ' The navy of 
the United States represents our ideal. A great 
thing for America is that she does not seek to acquire 
territory. She defends humanity and does that which 
humanity demands.' Noble words ! As hollow as 
they may sound to those who have longed to hear 
some note of ' humanity ' from Washington during 
aU these racking months, let us believe that now the 
heart of the country feels the beat of the greater 
human heart which is labouring in the titanic struggle 
in Europe, that the ghost of moral neutrality is laid, 
and that the Executive is reading aright the un- 
mistakable signs of an aroused national will and an 
92 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

be actually incumbent upon the nation to 
depart from its neutrality, but its readiness to 
do so, its recognition of its international obliga- 
tions, should be made clear beyond dispute. 

inflexible national purpose. May the Nation still 
retrieve the loss, the veritable loss, of the greatest 
opportunity to ' defend humanity ' since the emanci- 
pation proclamation of Abraham Lincoln ! " — Citation 
from the article " La Neutralite," already quoted. 



93 



LECTURE III 

THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON 
AMERICAN LIFE 



LECTURE III 



EFFECTS ON THE POPULATION: 
IMMIGRATION AND THE SETTLE- 
MENT OF FOREIGN GROUPS 

The first result of the war is one which 
Americans share with all the other countries : 
a remarkable effect, or series of effects, upon 
the population. In the European countries, 
of course, the population suffers directly from 
the decimating effects of war. The best man- 
hood of the belligerent nations is exposed to 
death. In America, supposing the neutrality 
of the country to continue, this result is not 
to be expected ; but another, due to its peculiar 
position, may be. The increase of the Ameri- 
can population is due in normal times to an 
extraordinary immigration, amounting to one 

G 97 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

million persons per year. The statistics show 
changes from year to year in the points of 
origin, no less than forty countries being repre- 
sented, ^he nations sending the greatest 
numbers to America are largely the same, and 
with all the changes, the number maintains 
itself with remarkable consistency. The coun- 
tries from which the largest immigration has 
proceeded in recent years are : Germany, 
Austria, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Great Britain, 
the Scandinavian countries, the Balkans, 
Greece, and the Turkish Empire. The great 
streams of people thus crossing the sea are the 
Germanic, the Scandinavian, and the Southern 
European. It is to be noted that while enor- 
mous numbers of Italians emigrate, they 
do not settle permanently in America, but 
cross and re-cross, carrying back to sunny Italy 
in the winter the wages they have earned in 
America during the summer months. 

It will appear from this general and super- 
ficial indication that the Latin nations are 
not prominent in this peopling of America. 
The Germanic (among them vast numbers of 
Jews, as there are also among the Slavs), the 
Scandinavian, and the Slavic races may 

98 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

be said, roughly, to contribute the bulk of the 
new population. 

As to the occupations and the distribution 
of these peoples in the United States, there are 
certain outstanding facts. 

The Germans and Austrians are, for the 
larger part, city people or at least villagers who 
enter into commerce and industry ; they are 
not in the main agriculturists. They cluster 
in groups, establish small centres of their own 
" Kultur " (a brewery being the nucleus in 
many instances), maintain a Lutheran church, 
and give themselves up to permanent estab- 
lishment in the country. They are disposed 
to take out naturalization papers, and seem 
to be contented and well-to-do citizens. They 
support newspapers published in German, 
continue to speak German in the home, organize 
Germanic societies, which keep them in touch 
with the Fatherland. Their American settle- 
ments often go by the name of " Little 
Germany." 

Besides their " Little Germanics," however, 
there are not a few large Germanics in the 
United States. Certain cities have become by 
preference centres of the German population ; 

99 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

and these cities are among the most populous 
German cities in the world. Germany does 
not contain many cities having a greater 
German population than Chicago, St. Louis, 
Nev/ York, Milwaukee, and San Francisco. 
In these cities the German group is often 
controlling — or seeks to be so — in municipal, 
educational, and local affairs of all sorts, and 
has a considerable influence in State and 
National politics. The " German vote " in 
many States is formidable ; in the nation 
at large it is important but not dangerous.* 

The statement is made by German writers 
that one-fourth of the American population is 
of German descent.t They conclude from this 

* A careful estimate, based on the census of 1910, 
makes the number about i^ millions of those voters 
one or both of whose parents were German or Austrian 
(the total vote of the country is about 15 millions), 
The " allied " vote, similarly calculated, would be 
double this number, while the " native " voters 
would also oppose any foreign group which voted 
*' solidly." This was shown in the recent local elections 
at Chicago, where the conditions were most favourable 
to the " German vote." See the next note. 

t This statement is based upon the estimate, 
itself vague and uncontrolled, that 25 million 
100 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

that it is a mistake to say that the United 
States is an Anglo-Saxon country or that the 
British tradition of New England reflects the 
present national sentiment.* It is needless to 
say that nothing could better bring out and 
fortify the Anglo-Saxon tradition and sentiment 
than the revelations now made of the Germans' 
aims in America and the methods they are 
ready to adopt to secure their aims. 

The Austrians are hardly distinguished by 
the Americans from the Germans proper ; 
they are all alike. On the other hand, the 

members of American families have one more or less 
remote German ancestor. Besides not distinguishing 
between the real Germans and those who have merely 
a Teutonic strain, this number does not exclude the 
non-naturalized Germans, who are the most out- 
spoken but have no vote. These have no rights in 
the country at ail, save those, so easily abused, 
granted by a too generous hospitality. 

• Designating as German and Austrian all those 
who claim one foreign-born parent, the number is 
8| millions, while the British alone are lo millions 
{see the North American Review, October 191 5). This 
shows that Britain has contributed more than Ger- 
many to the nation even in the two last generations, 
to say nothing of those which preceded. 

lOI 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

Hungarians are quite a distinct element in the 
population. 

As to the other racial groups, their distribu- 
tion is also characteristic. The Irish congre- 
gate in the large cities, where they aspire to 
minor positions of trust. Apart from the 
enormous number who go into domestic service, 
especially among their women, a sort of work 
for which the German seldom appHes, the 
Irishman courts the civic in every capacity, 
from policeman to alderman. An Irishman 
loves a uniform. In certain instances the 
larger city governments (New York, Phila- 
delphia, Boston) have been controlled and 
often corruptly administered by Irishmen. 

As to the Scandinavians, they have settled 
in the vast unoccupied farming lands of the 
north-west. They go direct to the country 
on landing and establish themselves as land- 
owners and farmers. The movement of immi- 
gration of Swedes and Norwegians into the 
agricultural north-west in recent years has 
been one of the marked phenomena of Ameri- 
can population. They are considered as being 
among the best elements of the foreign 
population. 

102 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

As to occupation, a little more detail may- 
be found interesting. The Italians are of two 
classes. They let themselves out in great 
numbers (as they do also in Switzerland) by 
day-labour under a contractor for special pieces 
of work, such as railroad construction or irriga- 
tion works. In this way, they drift from place 
to place, do not establish homes in America, 
but return to their own country. Another 
type of Italian immigrant, on the other hand, 
settles in a city, opens a small store for the 
sale of certain articles (most often fruit, in 
reminiscence of Italy), has a boot-shining 
parlour, or conducts a barber's shop. Add to 
this a vast number of Italian waiters in cafes 
and restaurants and a great many boot- 
makers and travelling musicians and the list 
of Italian activities is about complete. Much 
the same may be said of the Greeks ; they are 
mostly found conducting small businesses in 
the cities. 

The Germans, besides settling in their own 
chosen localities, show also the penetrating 
activity which characterizes them elsewhere — 
notably in France. They are everywhere in 
evidence in the hotel business as proprietors 

103 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

and as waiters, in the hairdressing trade, and 
especially in the retail sale of beer, wine, and 
spirits ; a large proportion of the bar-keepers 
and bar-tenders (the small proprietors and con- 
ductors of liquor establishments) are German. 

But, unlike the Italians and Greeks, the 
Germans do not stop with small business ; 
they establish and conduct large establish- 
ments and engage in enterprises of great 
variety. Their influence in finance is witnessed 
by the important banking and financial houses, 
many of international standing, in New York, 
Chicago, and St. Louis. They are influential 
also in musical enterprises of all sorts, both as 
patrons and as performers. 

It will be noticed that I have hitherto said 
little of the French and the English. It is 
because there is little to be said. The French 
do not come to America in sufficient numbers 
to permit a general statement. Those who do 
come have generally a special trade or expect 
to have a special position. They are found in 
the establishments of dressmaking, millinery, 
perfumery, manicuring, etc. The French chef 
is in demand in the large hotels and in rich 
families ; elsewhere he is too expensive a 
104 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

luxury ! In the country at large the French- 
man is almost a fable. In my native town, for 
example, a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, 
capital of an eastern State, I never during all my 
youth saw a person who spoke French, while 
a German shopkeeper or bar-tender was to 
be found on every second street corner. The 
French are practically unknown, except as 
they are caricatured with other foreigners in 
travelling theatrical troupes. 

British immigration has been greatly reduced, 
relatively speaking, in recent years — that is, 
apart from the Irish. The Scots, too, come 
more than the English proper relatively to 
their home population. The British who do 
come are so promptly assimilated in the 
population by marriage or by a quick scatter- 
ing over the country in good positions of 
trust and responsibility, that one cannot 
distinguish them by any external marks, 
save their accent. They are predominantly 
of the middle and well-to-do educated classes — 
clerks, engineers, foremen, etc. There are 
also English domestic servants, but not in 
numbers to rival the Irish. 

Coming to speak of the effect of the war 

105 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

upon this mass of distinct national groups, 
the first thing to be noted is the immediate and 
ahnost universal cessation of immigration to 
the United States from certain important 
nations. Here is the counterpart in America 
of the decimation wrought by the war in the 
home population of these States. If certain 
of the European countries lose vast numbers 
of men, certain of them gain a great number 
also by the cessation of emigration to America. 
America loses this withheld body of immigrants, 
but the deficit * seems, from what statistics we 
have, to have been made up by refugees, fugi- 
tives, and contingents of " alarmed " persons 
of various classes from other centres — as, for 
example, Belgians and Armenians. Whether 
the deficit is a real loss or not one may be 
allowed to express one's scepticism. Possibly 
it might be suggested to certain of the European 

• That is during the first half-year ; for the entire 
year ending June 191 5, the deficit was enormous. 
" The total number of United States immigrant 
aliens fell from 1,218,480 in the previous year to 
326,700 in the period ended June 30 last, the lowest 
number for twenty years." — New Tork Herald, 
December 29, 191 5. 
106 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

countries after the war that for a time all 
emigration to America be suppressed, in the 
interest both of the mother-country and of the 
United States ! 

The reason of this partial cessation of 
emigration is plain. In the belligerent coun- 
tries the mobilization retains the men of middle 
age, which is also the age of emigration. In 
certain countries, also, the alarm over the 
European crisis is so great — notably in the 
small countries which remain neutral — that the 
able-bodied men are held at home in a state of 
preparation for possible military service, as in 
Holland, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian 
countries. This accounts for the diminution 
in immigration from these countries. 

Another direct effect — taken with that pro- 
duced by the rush to secure naturalization — 
is a diminution in the United States of the 
non-naturalized foreign population. For the 
call for reservists and for volunteers is heard 
by citizens of half a dozen countries — England, 
Italy, France, Bulgaria, Servia, Belgium, not 
to mention Germany and Austria. These men 
rush homeward — when they can find trans- 
portation ! The result has been very one- 

107 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

sided, however, for not all the reservists have 
been able to go home. Hundreds of thousands 
of Germans and Austrians of fighting age remain 
in America — not always sorry, nor very un- 
grateful to the British Navy (I have talked 
with some of them). It would have been 
better for the United States if this mass of 
mobilizable foreigners had left the country ; 
their presence is a care and a menace. Yet the 
United States may well add to her marks of 
friendliness to the Allies the care of a half- 
million of their prisoners. For it is not usually 
remarked that all the German and Austrian 
reservists thus kept away from their countries 
are legitimate prisoners of the British Navy ! 
America is, in a sense, an extension of the 
Allies' prison camps. 

Certainly this cessation of certain kinds of 
immigration is not permanent ; the current 
will swell again after the war. But the United 
States will have been given a certain lesson, 
and will have sufficient time to take the 
measures which the conditions require. It is 
a very grave problem for the Americans ; its 
gravity is put in evidence anew in view of the 
revelation the country has had of the real 
io8 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

disposition and interests of certain groups of 
the foreign-born population. 

A certain disproportion in one of these effects 
works, it would appear, to the disadvantage 
of France. While other belligerent countries 
can recoup their population during and after 
the war — in a relative sense — by stopping the 
current of emigration to America, this is not 
to any extent true of France. The French 
emigration has been too slight to matter. But 
in Germany and Austria this is a resource that 
is not likely to be overlooked. One would not 
be surprised after peace is declared to see laws 
passed in Germany forbidding workmen of 
certain trades leaving the country. They may 
be retained to diminish the loss of those killed 
or crippled by the war. Chemists, mechanics, 
metal-workers, skilled labour of all kinds, will 
be in demand. Possibly the great mass of 
reservists now held in America will then be 
given the chance or the order to return to the 
Fatherland. Many will go, willingly or not, 
if we may judge from the notice issued by the 
German Embassy in the United States calling 
attention to the Law Delbriick, which subjects 
to very severe penalties all Germans, even 

109 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

naturalized American citizens (who by the 
terms of this law still remain German ! *), who 
have taken work in any way connected with 
the manufacture and sale of munitions to the 
Allies. Once a German always a German ! 
But it is not necessary, once having escaped, 
to return to Germany and to jail. 

As to German immigration into the United 
States, it is impossible to see as yet what the 
result will be. Possibly, as suggested above, 
the German Government will restrict the emi- 
gration of certain classes of workmen ; but 
the important factor will be the condition of 
the German Empire in respect to colonies. 

* Article 25 of the Law Delbriick, July 191 3, 
coming into force January 1914. By this law 
Germans naturalized in other countries remain 
German citizens for ten continuous years thereafter. 
But in counting this period of ten years, every visit 
to German soil, for however trivial a purpose or for 
however brief a time, sets a new date for the beginning 
of the ten continuous years. In the administration 
of the law, moreover, other technicalities, such as 
those of formal notification, etc., are discovered 
which make it practically impossible for a German 
by birth to escape reclamation as being still a German 
citizen. 
IIO 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

If the greater colonies remain permanently in 
the hands of the Allies, undoubtedly a larger 
proportion than formerly of German emigrants 
will go to the United States. If, on the other 
hand, Germany retains her colonies, these 
latter will continue as before to share in the 
movement of emigration. 

Another and kindred result of the war on 
American population will no doubt be a re- 
distribution of the centres of influence, and 
of the groupings of the foreigners. The trades 
and fields of labour formerly held by the 
negroes, for example, in the United States have 
been much encroached upon in recent years 
by the Italians, Hungarians, and South Euro- 
pean immigrants. The negro is being driven 
to the wall. This movement is likely to be 
accentuated by the war, in view of the arrival 
in America of numbers of true refugees. Already 
movements are on foot in certain of the southern 
States to welcome the Belgians, even to give 
them inducements to settle and establish 
colonies. This current will no doubt be only 
temporary, and its results not at all equal to 
the probable loss in immigration in general ; 
but it will be significant in certain localities. 

Ill 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

It may also have the happy effect of restoring 
in a measure the character that American 
hospitahty had at the outset, and which 
Americans would like to see it retain — that of 
offering a resort, a refuge, to worthy people 
who are unfortunate or oppressed. If such 
people could replace the Fenian, the anarchist, 
the foreign plotters now so prominent, great 
would be the gain to the country at large. 

There is likely also to be a sharpening of 
race-feeling, and a subsequent definition, even 
locally, of the limits of the foreign colonies. 
Milwaukee and St. Louis will, no doubt, become 
more German than ever, while the cities of 
anti-German sentiment will harbour fewer of 
those who find it hard to breathe the atmo- 
sphere. The Italians will fraternize less with 
the Austrians, and the Poles will hate the 
Boches with a new hatred. Serbs and Bulgarians 
will spit at one another in the streets. All this 
will, let us hope, react healthfully upon 
American national feeling. 



112 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

II 

INDUSTRIAL EFFECTS 

Industrially speaking, this state of things — 
the modification of immigration, together with 
the recall of large numbers of reservists — may 
seriously affect certain industries and the 
conditions of labour in general. There will 
probably be a great reduction in the ranks of 
skilled labour, the same in kind, if not in 
degree, with the similar reduction in Europe 
due to deaths on the field. This common 
reduction will act, as it usually does, to increase 
the demand and diminish the supply the world 
over. This in turn will affect the wages of 
the skilled labourer in America.* 

* " Labour is now fully employed, and doubtless 
at the highest average wages ever known. Although 
the number of foreign reservists returning to their 
native lands has been [partially] offset by immi- 
grants, the net gain of population by immigration 
has been much below other years and for the fiscal 
year ended June 30, 191 5, was but 50,000 against 
765,000 in the fiscal year 1914. There can be no 
great expansion of industry beyond the present rate 

H 113 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

In other realms, the intellectual and pro- 
fessional, this consideration will have less direct 
force ; but it is difficult to believe that the 
frightful decimation of the professional and 
literary classes in Europe will have no effects 
in America. 

Another result is a dislocation of the normal 
channels of industry and in the demands for 
labour. The immediate result of the European 
orders for munitions of war has been the 
transformation of establishments of the most 
varying kind and equipment into auxiliaries 
to the munition works. Not only steel com- 
panies, foundries, machine-making establish- 
ments, but motor-works, electrical companies, 
concerns engaged in the manufacture of railroad 
equipment and locomotives, companies capable 
of turning out " parts," such as the bicycle and 
sewing-machme factories, all go in for this 
new business, where profits are enormous. 
Furthermore, the auxiliary agencies for supply- 
ing raw material — iron ore, copper, rubber, 
petrol, etc. — all feel the impulse, and requisi- 

of production without more workers to man the 
machinery." — " Bulletin of the National City Bank 
of New York," January 1916. 

"4 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

tion in turn an enormous number of tributaries 
still more remote from the immediate require- 
ments of the war factories proper. All this 
requires new adjustments, both industrial and 
economic, new adaptations of labour no less 
than of capital, new enterprises and new 
organizations. 

We may add to this the extensive establish- 
ment of new industries. The need has already 
appeared, and is being rapidly met, of extending 
American manufacture to those things formerly 
brought from Germany and Austria, and which 
are no longer imported. American manufac- 
turers have imported from Germany great 
quantities of products essential to their busi- 
ness, and these importations have not been 
limited to things which could not be obtained 
or made in the United States, such as potash. 
The importation of dyes from Germany, for 
example, has been an enormous business. 
Other articles, such as toys of all descriptions, 
certain classes of buttons, lead-pencils and 
erasers — a host of small but necessary articles 
— have been wellnigh monopolized by the 
German makers. 

The Americans are rapidly occupying all 

115 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

these fields. With their native inventive talent 
for designing and transforming machinery, and 
their abundant resources in mineral and agri- 
cultural products, it will not be long before all 
these products of overseas importation will be 
made at home and even exported abroad — as 
has been the case with a great many manufac- 
tures already in the history of American 
industry (boots and shoes, dentists' appliances, 
furniture, etc.). One of the most important 
of these new fields of manufacture is that of 
delicate instruments of precision, laboratory 
and surgical apparatus, in which the Germans, 
although rivalled by the French and English, 
have largely held the American clientele. 

This will no doubt result in diminishing the 
importation to the United States in the future 
of many manufactured articles which Europe 
has hitherto exchanged for American raw 
products. 



ii6 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 



III 

EFFECTS ON FOREIGN TRADE AND 
TRANSPORTATION 

A further effect of the present state of things 
is seen in the sphere of foreign trade. This 
is aheady making itself felt in two ways. First, 
the chance arises of occupying the markets 
which were closed to the belligerent nations — 
especially to Germany — at the opening of hos- 
tilities. Germany has lost, for the time being 
at any rate, both her carrying trade and her 
export trade. The German colonies are pos- 
sibly to remain in new hands. The other 
nations at war, and the neutrals to a less 
extent, have felt the restraining effect of their 
preoccupation, their activity being limited to 
the Hnes of industry connected with the war. 
The result is that the United States has the 
opportunity to extend her foreign commerce 
indefinitely. South America, for example, lies 
before her. The United States is the nearest 
and now practically the only source of supply, 
for South and Central America, of manufac- 

117 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

tured articles of all sorts, both necessities and 
luxuries. Resolutions of Boards of Trade 
and of organizations for advancing exporta- 
tion, and articles in trade journals, are already- 
urging the American business man to take 
advantage of this great opportunity. 

But another matter is brought to the front 
by this state of things, a matter which now 
assumes great importance, the weakness of the 
American mercantile marine. Despite many 
abortive schemes and many untried proposals, 
the United States has never built up a body of 
ships sufficient to carry its products to foreign 
markets. It has had less than one-eighth of 
its foreign freight transported under the 
American flag. Three-quarters of the goods 
imported into the harbour of New York 
come in under foreign flags.* It was in view 
of remedying this defect that the Bill per- 
mitting the Government to buy and register 
foreign-built ships, to which I have already 
referred, was proposed. The alternative would 
be the abrogation of the law, passed in the 

* The latest report (191 3-14) of the traffic through 
the Suez Canal shows that American tonnage amounted 
only to one-tenth of i per cent, of the whole. 
118 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

interest of the American working man, v/hich 
requires that all ships of American register be 
built in the United States. Even this latter 
course would not meet the present urgent 
requirement of a vast number of ships to 
conduct the new American foreign commerce. 

For there is another embarrassment. The 
demand for the ships of the belligerent nations 
is greater at home than in normal times. 
England, the nation having the greatest carry- 
ing marine, has requisitioned the ships for 
transport from the colonies, for the importation 
of munitions and necessities, for auxiliaries of 
all sorts in the war. German ships in turn 
have been destroyed or are interned at home 
or abroad. The Dutch are busy extending 
their trade in their own bottoms. Here, then, 
has arrived the day, predicted long ago, when 
American commerce would be essentially handi- 
capped by the lack of an American mercantile 
marine. 

This necessity of ships has been seen to be 
pressing since the completion of the Panama 
Canal. It is evident to what an extent the 
opening of the canal extends the coast-wise 
commerce of the United States. Vessels escape 

119 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

the long sea voyage around the South American 
capes and remain practically within reach of 
port all the journey from east to west coast. 
Here is a field for the development of a carrying 
trade from the eastern sea-board, as well as 
from foreign countries, to the Pacific, and vice 
versa, since many cargoes coming from abroad 
are in any case reshipped at an American 
port. 

This is only one of the economic and com- 
mercial questions made urgent by the opening 
of the canal. The relation between the trans- 
port conditions by way of the canal and those 
by way of the transcontinental raihoads is a 
matter of debate and discussion. The canal 
would undoubtedly feel the effects of the war 
seriously but for the fact that enormous land- 
slides have chosen this propitious time to take 
place, and the canal is all too frequently closed. 

The broader effects of the opening of hos- 
tilities upon American commerce and industry 
may be indicated in the light of certain general 
phenomena. The outbreak of war paralysed 
the financial market and Wall Street (the 
New York Bourse) was closed for several 
months. The greatest alarm prevailed in 

120 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

financial circles, in view of the condition of 
foreign exchange. The customary purchases 
and expenditures, running into tens of millions 
of dollars, had been made in Europe, but the 
customary credits, due tQ the sale abroad of 
American staple articles, such as cotton, were 
made impossible by the interruption of trans- 
portation facilities and the blockade of many 
of the ports of Europe. The war found the 
United States threatened by an enormous 
debtor balance. The country was embar- 
rassed by the inability to dispose of an over- 
abundant cotton crop. The cotton-planters 
of the southern States, known as the " cotton 
belt," saw ruin staring them in the face ; 
and the whole south appealed to the nation 
for help. This unfavourable condition of 
foreign trade was shown by the fall in the 
value of the dollar in London and Paris to 
5 and 2 per cent, below par. 

This condition of things was, however, only 
temporary. Certain positive forces began to 
work, among them the new orders from abroad 
due to the war, and the measures taken at 
home to secure safe and sufficient transporta- 
tion. The American Government announced 

121 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

a scheme of marine insurance, and the EngHsh 
navy swept the German corsairs from the seas. 
Furthermore, the foreign market for cotton, 
while seeming to lose the large customary sale 
to Germany and Austria, gained about a corre- 
sponding amount in sales to neutral countries 
bordering these empires ; and it was soon 
evident that America was indirectly supplying 
to Germany a sort of munition as important 
as the fire-arms supplied to the Allies. Great 
Britain and France at last overcame their 
reluctance (a reluctance due to consideration 
of American sensibilities) and declared cotton 
contraband of war. The results of this measure, 
too long deferred, have not justified either the 
fears of the Americans or the hesitations of the 
Allied Governments ; for the special measures 
taken by the American Government to relieve 
the cotton interests of the south have been 
found unnecessary, the sale of the new crop 
of 191 5 giving practically no apprehension. 
This illustration shows the complete recovery 
and revival of American commerce from the 
paralysis due to the war. 

The American Department of Commerce 
has recently announced the formation of a 
122 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

" trust " to manage exportations to neutral 
countries, under Government supervision, to 
see that the goods do not indirectly reach the 
warring nations. 

The same result appears in industry generally 
and also in finance. American exports have 
increased enormously in the last six months. 
The factories are overtaxed to fill the orders 
for war material,* with the results on industry 
generally upon which I have already remarked 
above.t The recent statements of the 
unfilled orders on the books of the United 
States Steel Corporation (statements which 
serve as an index of the industrial condition 
of the country) are among the best in its 
history. Companies which had passed their 
dividends for a period before the war are 

* Exports of war material alone have reached an 
average of a million dollars a day, according to the 
" Bulletin of the National City Bank," November 6, 
191 5 — a great New York bank which has just estab- 
lished branches in several South American cities. 

t From the beginning of the war to July 30, 191 5> 
the country sold to the belligerents thirty-eight 
thousand motor vehicles costing one hundred million 
dollars. — The Scientific American. 

123 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

resuming their payments from earnings. And 
the statistics of internal and inter-state trade 
show the same revival and extension. 



IV 

EFFECTS ON FINANCE 

In finance similar conditions show themselves. 
The national exportation, so far from being 
balanced by the debt of the United States to 
Europe incurred before the war, has turned 
the balance of trade enormously in favour of 
the Americans. Importations have dimin- 
ished little,* a fact which shows that the 
people are not restricting their purchases of 
things brought from abroad. Moreover, the 
millions usually spent by American travellers 
during the summer months, which generally 
serve to reinforce the paying power of Europe 
as against purchases made in America, have 
stayed at home. This sum has been held in 
reserve or set to work in domestic channels. 

* The reduction of importations has increased, 
however, since this was written. 
124 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

The balance in favour of the United States 
has become so great that the exchange rate 
in pounds sterHng and francs has reached a 
level never before known. The American 
dollar has lately sold for six francs in Paris, 
as against a normal of five francs fifteen to 
eighteen centimes, showing a premium of 
about 1 6 per cent. Furthermore, the ship- 
ments of gold from Europe to America to 
pay for war orders have resulted in a condi- 
tion of easy money in the States and have 
produced some speculation. The price of 
American securities on the New York stock 
market has undergone a steady advance in 
spite of the sale there of millions of bonds 
held abroad, the stocks of munition and war- 
supply companies being much inflated. 

All these indications — industrial, commer- 
cial, financial — point in the same direction : 
the United States is not suffering financially — 
quite the contrary.* 

* This makes it seem surprising to Europeans — 
and not to them alone — that the United States 
Government should lay such stress upon the inconve- 
niences and small losses occasioned to trade by the 
Allies' blockade of Germany. Why should more 

125 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

V 

THE BALANCE RESTORED : AMERI- 
CAN LIBERALITY 

It Is a pleasure to recognize, however, that 
this gain is off-set in certain ways. The 
Americans have done much to show where 
their sympathies are, by financial as well as 
by other undertakings. The recent report of 
the " American Commission for the Succour of 
Belgium and the North of France " wiU be read 
with pleasure by Americans generally ; it 
shows appropriations for relief amounting dur- 
ing the first year to $57,600,000(3^11,500,000), 
spent for supplies and necessities alone. The 
regular expenditure it is expected during the 

heat be engendered in protesting over some delays 
in the delivery of a cargo of sugar than in demanding 
the cessation of acts of dastardly murder directed 
against American citizens ? Europeans are right 
in saying that the President seems to forget, in 
addressing England, that that country — in the words 
of an eminent scientist, Prof. E. B. Poulton — is 
" at war, not at law." See the vigorous remarks of 
this writer (Poulton, " Science and the Great War," 
Oxford University Press, 191 5, pp. 34-38). 
126 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

present winter will amount to $2,000,000 to 
$2,500,000 per week. This is only one of the 
agencies of American relief. Another very- 
striking way in which the Americans have 
shown that they know what to do with their 
money appears in the subscription to the 
Anglo-French war loan to the extent of 
2,500,000,000 frames. It is well known also 
to Americans living abroad that many of these 
residents, especially in France, have brought 
over considerable sums from their private 
fortunes to invest in the internal loans of 
France (the Obligations de la Defense nationale 
of 1 91 4 and the Emprunt 5 pour cent of 1915 *). 
All this shows sympathy on its practical and 
effective side, and restores the " balance of 
trade " in a very actual way. 

In the United States these measures have 
not remained the exclusive privilege of the 
rich. The desire to assist has penetrated into 
the most humble circles. There is a pathetic 
spirit of sacrifice abroad in the poorer classes ; 
men, women, and children bring their mite to 

* A single American company, through its Paris 
branch, subscribed to the latter loan for more than 
30 million francs. 

127 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

the relief agencies of France, Belgium, and 
Serbia. The result has appeared in certain 
interesting forms of fellow-feeling, such as that 
shown by the gift of dolls and toys as Christmas 
presents to the children of France, and the 
sending of special ships of foodstuffs from 
individual States. All this has cultivated in 
the Americans, we may well believe, a spirit 
of generosity and self-sacrifice which has 
required economy of living and care in personal 
expenditure of all kinds. It is the more 
remarkable also in view of the continued rise 
in the cost of living, which is more difficult to 
meet in America than elsewhere, since the scale 
of expense is always higher there than in other 
countries. 



VI 

MORAL EFFECTS : A CHANGED 
PACIFISM 

In the moral life the effects of the war will 
no doubt show themselves to be very marked ; 
we may discern already, in a measure, their 
nature. There is a revolt against the vague 
128 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

and softening theories of life which enervate 
the citizen and impair his manly character. 
The example of the heroic armies battling on 
European soil, of their deeds of bravery indi- 
vidual and collective, the revelation of the 
constant dangers to which even the most 
peace-loving peoples are exposed at the hands 
of predatory and deceitful neighbours, the 
elevation of the ideals of chivalry and sacrifice 
on one side over against the exposure of so 
much that is base and ignoble on the other — 
all this, seen and felt by the Americans, must 
stimulate their enthusiasm for the nobler 
ideals it exemplifies. The " mollycoddle " 
and the " Miss Nancy " will have less place 
and tolerance in the future. 

This hardening of the manly virtues, so to 
speak, will show itself, I imagine, in certain 
special and definite modifications of the national 
point of view. 

Pacifism in the United States as elsewhere 
will bear the scars of the shock to which it 
has been subjected. No reasonable American, 
as no reasonable European, can henceforth 
fail to qualify his pacific theories of fife in 
two directions. First, he will distinguish it, 

I 129 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

on the side of theory, from the various forms 
of Utopianism in which pacific sentiment tends 
to clothe itself. He will see that the world- 
problems, the racial contentions, are not all 
settled ; that the national emancipations are 
not all achieved ; that the rights of life and 
liberty are not yet everywhere established, 
and are not likely to be by this war. Nations 
considered enlightened and liberal, pacific in 
profession and proficient in the arts pf peace, 
turn out to be predatory and contentious, and 
force upon other peoples their purposes of 
conquest and subjugation. The Utopian and 
the dreamer who would plan the new map of 
a world suddenly converted to uprightness, 
and distribute righteously the fields of the 
planet to those who deserve to cultivate them 
— these men have lost their calling. As long 
as one State, great enough to draw the sword 
with any chance of success, still believes in 
the " will to power " and prepares to exercise 
it, the world is committed to war as the inter- 
national arbiter, lamentable as this prospect is. 
There has been recently founded in the 
United States a " League for the Enforcement 
of Peace " ; in the title of which the word 
130 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

" enforcement " suggests the limit set to 
Utopianism by the hand of force. In all projects 
of the kind — projects to institute an inter- 
national police strong enough to compel the 
military nations to obey the decisions of inter- 
national courts — it is overlooked that such 
enforcement would itself be a war like other 
wars, perhaps longer and more bloody than 
others ! Is not the Quadruple Entente at this 
very moment acting as just such a league — a 
union for the enforcement of treaties and con- 
ventions, and ultimately of a durable peace ? 
In this war righteous peace is being enforced ; 
why an academic league to talk about it ? 
The only role proper to such a league — for 
the present, at least — ^would be that of 
instructing the citizens in their international 
duties and teaching them to count on fulfilling 
these duties. 

The situation cures our Utopianism, in fact, 
and tempers our optimism. The future pro- 
gress of the good and the just among nations 
will have to be secured, it would seem, as it 
has been in the past, by struggle and blood. 
There is no other way to " enforce " peace. 

The other limitation on the American's 

131 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

pacifism, in the future, will be that to which 
I have already referred : he will refuse to 
be led astray by a sentimentalism based on 
immature religious and humane considerations. 
France has suffered from this, as well as from 
the more theoretical forms of Utopianism ; for 
France is the country of ideals and of a practical 
life planned in the light of ideals. The Ameri- 
can has been going the same way, though less 
consciously, for he has been led in his non- 
resistance theories by feeling, not by reasoning. 
His reaction should be the easier. He should 
not need the shock that France has had to 
rouse him to the realities of international 
politics. His sentimental love of peace will 
have to adjust itself in the future to the lessons 
this war is teaching him : the need of a foreign 
policy resolute and armed to support its 
claims, the definition of the national position 
in respect to the controversies which tear the 
world, the acceptance of the obligations of a 
great people to take its place in the family of 
nations and to shirk none of the duties which 
such a place involves and imposes, the readi- 
ness to support the national signature and to 
defend the national honour by all the means 
132 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

at the nation's disposal, the resolve to have in 
hand the means of defence not only of its own 
territory and rights, but of those of other 
nations which make appeal to its generous 
support against national piracy and aggres- 
sion.* 

These are the lessons the war will bring 
home, let us hope, to every American, pacific 
as he may be. He sees the impossibility of a 
neutral morahty, the cowardice of failure in 
the duties which his own morality imposes, or 
in the acts to which the immorality of others 
compels. He must find his voice and take his 
place when the world's precious accumulations 
in years of peaceful effort and generous labour 
are imperilled by a Power reaching its ends 
by the means that gave to the Philistine his 

* Americans should recall the fine response made 
by President Monroe, and re-expressed in the eloquent 
words of Webster's address to Congress, to the appeal 
of Greece against the oppression of the Turks and 
the pretensions of the Holy Alliance, in 1823. {See 
Morton Prince, " From Webster to Wilson, the 
Disintegration of an Ideal," reprinted from the 
New York Times, November 21, 191 5.) Monroe is 
the President upon whose " doctrine " the present- 
day politicians base their unconcern ! 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

reputation and to the Vandal his name. The 
shudder that passed over the country at the 
news of the execution of Miss Edith Cavell 
showed that in Americans, as in other civiHzed 
peoples, the lowest strata of moral repugnance 
had been touched. 

In all these respects we will expect the Ameri- 
can to be less yielding and tolerant in his 
patriotism, more cautious, better informed 
than formerly, though less proud. He has 
seen what other nations can do by standing for 
large truths and great rights — ^what England 
can do for Belgium, what France for Serbia. 
He realizes that economic prosperity is after 
all the least concern of a nation ; for it pre- 
supposes the maintenance of those relations of 
human organization on which all economy, 
political and social, must rest. He realizes 
the fragility of these common things — details 
of international finance, travel, communication, 
literary and artistic intercourse — as well as the 
insecurity of treaties and conventions. Much 
that is interwoven in the tissue of his everyday 
life appears fragile and insecure, exposed to the 
outbursts of national rapacity and "will to 
power." 

134 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

It is not too much to expect, moreover, that 
the great body of enUghtened American opinion, 
instructed as it is by a remarkably intelligent 
newspaper press,* wiU understand the theo- 
retical issues involved in the war. 

On one side there is the Democratic theory 
of government, which looks upon the state as 
a means, an instrument of the Nation, not as 
an end in itself — a means to the realization of 
the personal and social values which are weighed 
and chosen by the free opinion of the citizens 
of the Nation, in their free development, and 
for their free enjoyment. The state itself has 
merely an instrumental value ; it is in its form 
the embodiment of the moral principles and 
civic beliefs of the personal and individual 
agents who inform and direct it. 

This is the foundation of all democratic and 
constitutional government — this maxim that 
the state is a means, not an end, an instru- 
mental, not an absolute value. The state 
reflects and is bound by the morality of the 

* See^ for example, the volume of collected edi- 
torials from the 'North American of Philadelphia 
entitled " The War from this Side," Lippincott, 
1915. 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

Nation, which is the same as that of a person ; 
it has no moral code of its own distinct from 
this. The word Nation, not the word state, 
should be spelt with a capital letter. 

In opposition to this we find the Autocratic 
theory, restated in the terms of modern German 
philosophy and politics. It holds that " over- 
individual " and absolute values reside in the 
State and give to it the value of an end in 
itself. The State alone is the bearer of the 
principles of " eternal value " ; it alone secures 
to the individuals of each generation their 
welfare and lays down to them their duty. 
The values attaching to the German State 
include the " divine right " of the Crown, the 
mission of a " chosen people," the possession 
of an " over-morality " which is " beyond 
good and evil," and in the execution of which 
means are chosen and employed suited to 
further the " will to power " of the rulers of 
the State. In this theory the word State 
is written with the capital. 

Here, then, in the German State there is a 
political authority confessedly not responsible 
to the moral principles which rule in individual 
conduct — ^humanity, veracity, justice, contrac- 
136 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 

tual obligation — an authority representing a 
divine call, asserting itself in the members of a 
dynastic house, determining by itself alone the 
inferior value of all other cultures and all 
other States, and appealing to physical force 
as the final instrument of its will to dominate. 

The issue as between these two theories is 
not new ; its familiar meaning is obscured by 
the pretentious terms of the Hegelian and 
Nietzschian philosophies. Between the two 
there can be no compromise in practice now, 
as in history there never has been. The gage 
of force once placed, by force alone can the 
issue be decided. If the outcome of genera- 
tions of enlightenment in Germany takes 
form in a retrogression to the tribal conceit 
of a chosen people, to the dynastic pretension 
of divine right, to the claim to moral exemp- 
tions combined with the irresponsible power 
of the robber barons, and to the vulgar licence 
of animal brutality calling itself the " master- 
morality " of the " superman " — then it is 
time that civilization, ceasing to talk theory 
to these people, forthwith take to arms ! 

This is not a European conflict, it is not an 
un-American war ; it is a human conflict, a 

137 



AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

vn^rld war — for the preservation and extension 
of what is of eternal value, the right to self- 
government and the maintenance of public 
morality.* 

Finally, let us hope that the war will have 
drawn together the three Great Powers of the 
Atlantic that love justice and the life of peace — 
France, England, and the United States. Could 
these Powers but form a Pan- Atlantic League 
to enforce peace, inviting other nations to join 
them, a long step would be taken toward a 
more rational Utopia, and the spiritual interests 
of mankind would have a permanent and 
powerful Advance Guard. 

* See the writer's Herbert Spencer Lecture, *' The 
Super-State and the Eternal Values," Oxford Uni- 
versity Press, 1 91 6. 



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